Most people might not quite realise this, but our picture of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life is largely based on a small number of very-well researched fossil localities. The Morrison Formation in the American Southwest is one example, offering a window on life during the end of the Jurassic, between 157 and 150 million years ago. Published 13 years after the 2007 first edition, the second edition of Jurassic West updates you on the latest findings and the many taxonomical advances and stands out for just how readable and comprehensive it is.

Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World, written by John Foster, published by Indiana University Press in November 2020 (hardback, 531 pages)

This book is part of one of my favourite series, Life of the Past, and is one of several books that gives an as-complete-as-possible overview of a major fossil locality. Compared to the previously reviewed Oceans of Kansas I found this one to be more suitable for a general audience, as palaeontologist John Foster makes few assumptions as to what you might already know.

This starts with a very thorough overview of the geology and the stratigraphy of the Morrison Formation. What kinds of rocks does it consist of, what do these look like in the field, and how were they laid down? What are the names of the different rock layers; where are they, both geographically and in relation to each other; how old do we think they are; and what sort of fossils have we found in them? The many photos and diagrams help to further clarify the basic setting. Then there is the history of discoveries and the people who made them, and the descriptions of fossil quarries. I had never really appreciated how unassuming some scientifically important sites are—mere patches of dirt in the middle of nowhere.

“Foster makes few assumptions as to what you might already know, [starting] with a very thorough overview of the geology and the stratigraphy of the Morrison Formation”

These first four introductory chapters already take you to page 165 before Foster starts describing the fauna. For groups such as fish, amphibians, turtles, snakes, lizards, pterosaurs, and the many small mammals he is necessarily brief. Beyond describing the fragmentary specimens there is simply too little information to reconstruct their lifestyle and behaviour. The bulk of the book deals with the larger dinosaurs whose bones have better withstood the rigours of the fossilization process: the theropods (especially the omnipresent Allosaurus), stegosaurs, ankylosaurs, and especially the sauropods. Because we have more complete skeletons, we can say much more about what these animals were like in life. Foster’s text remains readable here, even when when he descends into technical detail, for example, the anatomical description of Diplodocus longus on page 248.

Foster makes some really interesting observations and puts forward ideas that I was not yet familiar with. For example, he points out the value of finding yet another Camarasaurus specimen: “we can’t forget that the sample sizes of most dinosaur species are pathetically small” (p. 240). And trying to understand dinosaur physiology “is not a simple matter one modern analog or another. It appears more and more likely that dinosaurs were unique” (p. 244). Foster is not afraid to admit his past errors, such as the identity of a crocodyliform mandible on page 196, or to defend views that are not shared by everyone. He thinks that diplodocids did not habitually rear up on their hindquarters to browse vegetation in the treetops, an idea put forward by Hallett and Wedel in The Sauropod Dinosaurs. Or the view that most suspected gastroliths (stones that are swallowed by animals to help in mechanical digestion of food in the stomach) that have been found in the Morrison Formation are more likely pebbles that were deposited by currents.

Another aspect I understood better after reading this book is that of taxonomy and nomenclature. The way we name living biological species differs from the nomenclatural rules for fossils. Given how fragmentary the fossilised bones are that palaeontologists sometimes have to work with, it is not uncommon to apply a tentative name, a nomen dubium, only to later collapse it as more material becomes available. Foster shows the relevance of such seemingly rarefied discussions by examining the validity of Amphicoelias altus which he thinks is a large Diplodocus. If he is right, nomenclatural priority rules mean “we’d be faced with switching all of our museum Diplodocus labels to Amphicoelias” (p. 258).

“The most exciting aspect of Jurassic West is that it is more than a large catalogue of specimens and localities [and] digs into the palaeoecology,”

The most exciting aspect of Jurassic West is that it is more than a large catalogue of specimens and localities. After 140 years of collecting we have so much information that compiling it all—a laborious job, as Foster explains—can bring fascinating insights. Chapter 7 thus digs into the palaeoecology, looking at species diversity, the distribution over different dietary guilds (herbivores, carnivores etc.), the distribution of weight and size, the geographic spread of species, and the shape of food webs. And he does so while being mindful of how these conclusions can be distorted by gaps in the rock record and the unevenness with which certain time periods have been explored in quarries. The 48-page appendix with localities of all vertebrate fossils used in the book will in itself be a goldmine for scientists.

A few final words of praise. Foster infuses his writing with the occasional touch of well-placed humour, such as when taking Tyrannosaurus rex down a notch: “in truth it has only one appeal: that it’s a big walking head with huge teeth […] I’ve always found the unusual ornamentation of a stegosaur skeleton far more interesting” (p. 280). He even engages in a bit of speculative fiction with the final chapter, which imagines what it would be like to trek through the area of the Morrison Formation during the Jurassic. Also noteworthy are the book’s production values: Jurassic West is a chunky book with a case-printed hardcover that is chock-a-block with illustrations, photos, and diagrams. I liked the drawings by Thomas Adams, although I did think his reconstructions suffered a bit from what palaeoartists call shrink-wrapping: drawing the skin to fit tightly around the bones. I also was particularly taken by the illustrations by Brian Engh in the last chapter.

If you bought the first edition of Jurassic West I would strongly advise you to check out this new edition and consider the upgrade: new finds, new taxa, new or reworked figures, updated taxonomy, reanalyses of existing data, reassessment of old conclusions—this is a significant reworking of the original. If you did not buy the first edition, then you have no excuse. Jurassic West is a fantastic addition to this long-running series and really brings to life both the animals of this time and the science behind it. Will he update his previous book Cambrian Ocean World for a second edition next? We can but hope, but I would be first in line to read it.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Jurassic West (2nd edition)

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What is better than a good dinosaur story? How about 25 of them? Geologist and palaeontologist Donald R. Prothero returns to Columbia University Press for the third book in this format. Having covered fossils and rocks, he now serves up 25 fascinating vignettes of famous dinosaurs and the people who discovered them.

The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries: Amazing Fossils and the People Who Found Them, written by Donald R. Prothero, published by Columbia University Press in July 2019 (hardback, 488 pages)

Prothero here has both chronology and dinosaur taxonomy by which to organise his chapters, starting in Britain with the very first dinosaur discoveries. He tells of Gideon Mantell and Iguanodon, Richard Owen (who founded what is now the London Natural History Museum) and Cetiosaurus, as well as the first dinosaurs in America. And no book taking the historical perspective would be complete without the infamous “Scrotum humanum“.

The remainder of the book is carved up in sections dealing with the long-necked sauropods, the carnivorous theropods, and the horned, spiked, armoured, and beaked ornithischians. This includes everyone’s favourites (Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops) and other lesser-known species that have been very influential scientifically.

“[…] you get far more than just 25 dinosaurs here. Many vignettes are mini-reviews of whole dinosaur families, bringing you up to speed on recent developments in palaeontology.”

But you get far more than just 25 dinosaurs here. Many vignettes are mini-reviews of whole dinosaur families, bringing you up to speed on recent developments in palaeontology. So, the chapter on Patagotitan from Argentina reviews the family tree of the sauropods, while the chapter on Giganotosaurus does the same for the theropods. The one on Deinocheirus explains more about the bizarre herbivorous(!) theropod therizinosaurs, and the chapter on Sinosauropteryx digs into feather evolution. Of course, with a field so vast, you cannot cover everything – the size of encyclopedic reference works such as The Dinosauria or The Complete Dinosaur should give anyone cause for a double-take. Even so, I was secretly mildly disappointed that the chapter on ankylosaurs did not profile the wonderful work of Canadian palaeontologist Victoria Arbour on tail club evolution (see also episode 53 of the Palaeocast podcast).

What did enthuse me as soon as I read the book’s flap text was the promise of a “clear and rigorous look at what palaeontologists consider sound interpretation of evidence”. Would I like to know more about how we know what we know? Yes please! A substantial part of that consists of nomenclatural issues. Early scholars often named species and genera based on scrappy and fragmentary fossils, something that reached a fever pitch during the so-called Bone Wars (more on that below). With time and more discoveries, many such names are now considered invalid or synonymous when material described as several species actually belonged to one species. This covers the famous case of Apatosaurus / Brontosaurus – the latter technically not valid – but also cases probably only know to palaeontologists. Is Torosaurus is a species proper, or a just a mature specimen of Triceratops? The consensus leans towards the former.

“Early scholars often named species and genera based on scrappy and fragmentary fossils, something that reached a fever pitch during the so-called Bone Wars […] many such names are now considered invalid or synonymous “

It is not all nomenclature though, there is plenty of attention for the biology. Why sauropods were not aquatic, and how we can estimate their size and mass. What evidence led to the realisation that dinosaurs were not sluggish, tail-dragging reptiles and how we figured out their posture. How we became convinced that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs and how amazing fossils revealed (proto)feathers on many. Or how we know more about metabolism, reproduction, growth and maturation, and even skin colour! There is an awful lot of very educational material woven into this book, with a balanced overview of ongoing discussions and different schools of thought. And Prothero deals out some healthy correctives where popular media and movies have been getting the science all wrong.

A starring role is reserved for the colourful cast of characters who dug up and described all these dinosaurs, both fossil hunters and palaeontologists. This includes, of course, O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope and their fierce rivalry known as the Bone Wars. Museum staff whose names I encountered while reviewing Assembling the Dinosaur and American Dinosaur Abroad. Fossil hunters such as workaholic John Bell Hatcher, the eccentric Austro-Hungarian Baron Franz Nopcsa, the flamboyant Roy Chapman Andrews who led a series of ambitious expeditions into the heartland of Mongolia in the 1920s, or Barnum Brown. But also researchers who have yet to be the subject of a biography and are therefore less well known to the general public, such as José Bonaparte, who through exceedingly hard work has single-handedly put Argentina on the palaeontological map. Their stories and adventures are worth the price of admission alone.

“A starring role is reserved for the colourful cast of characters, both fossil hunters and palaeontologists, […] Their stories and adventures are worth the price of admission alone.”

The book is liberally illustrated with black-and-white photos and drawings, both historical and contemporary. As with his previous book, this works for most illustrations, but some are either too dark or too drab (the reconstructions by Nobu Tamura would have been better off reproduced in colour). There are photos of amazing museum displays that I would love to see myself one day (the wall of not-yet-excavated dinosaur bones in Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument Quarry Visitors Center, or the wall of skulls showing the ceratopsian family tree at the Utah Museum of Natural History). Not to mention the photos of exceptionally preserved fossils (the nodosaur mummy retrieved from Alberta’s tar sands beggars belief!)

The Story of Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries bubbles over with the same love for the field that characterised Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and Benton’s The Dinosaurs Rediscovered, making it a must-read for dinosaur enthusiasts. You might think that with three books Prothero’s approach is becoming formulaic (indeed, a fourth book, The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries, has already been announced for later this year), but when a formula is this well-executed, I, for one, am hungrily eyeing up the next book.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

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The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries hardback or ebook

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Having just reviewed Nieuwland’s American Dinosaur Abroad, historian Lukas Rieppel’s book Assembling the Dinosaur seemed like a logical choice to read next. Whereas the former focused on the plaster casts of a Diplodocus skeleton that American business tycoon Andrew Carnegie donated to museums, Rieppel takes in a far wider sweep of history, studying the role of dinosaurs in America’s Long Gilded Age – the period from roughly 1880 to the Great Depression in 1929. This scholarly work charts the entanglement of economic transformation, notably the rise of large corporations, with the rise of palaeontology and changes in size, scope, and management of museums. Readers with an interest in the history of palaeontology will be particularly well-served by this book.

Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle, written by Lukas Rieppel, published by Harvard University Press in June 2019 (hardback, 325 pages)

Rieppel takes the summer of 1877 as the starting point of his book. Three separate quarries in the American West yielded some of the largest and most complete dinosaur fossils so far. This was a very interesting and short-lived period in which independent frontiersmen were swarming across the country during the mining boom, with railway construction following in their wake. Fossils were treated like other mining commodities, to be traded for cash with interested naturalists. This led to protracted negotiations and the risk of fraud and embellishment of fossils finds to boost their value. It was also a period that would not last long.

The reason for this was the rise of a new breed of large natural history museums that mounted their own fossil-collecting expeditions. Where did these suddenly come from? This is where Rieppel clarifies what he means by the entanglement of science and capitalism. A wave of mergers and acquisitions irrevocably altered the American business landscape at the beginning of the twentieth century, with many small, family-owned businesses being consolidated into far fewer, far larger corporations. Business magnates running these corporations funnelled some of their new wealth into philanthropic activities, including museums. And vertebrate palaeontology was a topic that was both a crowd-pleaser and one that, when done right, had an air of sophistication.

Rieppel first turns to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Backed by American banker J.P. Morgan, it made a huge publicity splash in 1905 with the mounted skeleton of a Brontosaurus. This event is Rieppel’s starting point for a history of this museum, from the ideas leading to its founding in 1869 up to this exhibition. But rather than the particulars, what makes this story so interesting is the wider context that Rieppel provides. At the time, the AMNH was competing against so-called dime museums whose exhibitions were far more lurid, including freaks of nature, pickled medical specimens with anatomical deformities, or outright fakes such as mermaids. Furthermore, they pioneered the idea of a museum being both a public venue and an institute of learning and scientific research. The 1905 exhibition was the stimulus for Andrew Carnegie to ask the director of his Pittsburgh museum to find a similar sauropod skeleton. This is the subject of chapter 3 of this book and my review of Nieuwland’s book American Dinosaur Abroad.

“Business magnates […] funnelled some of their new wealth into philanthropic activities, including museums. And vertebrate palaeontology was a topic that was both a crowd-pleaser and one that, when done right, had an air of sophistication.”

This theme of tension between what a museum could be and the reality in the face of competition is further explored in the last chapter. Dinosaurs were also hugely popular in movies, print publications, and amusement parks, all of which took liberties with their portrayal. Museums tried to set themselves apart by stressing how their ideas were informed by the latest science. Yet the desire to attract audiences with spectacular displays led to tensions with the scientific community, who struggled with the authenticity of displays (often cobbled together from different fossil skeletons) and the difficulties of deducing real-life posture from fragmentary fossil material.

Another case of corporate and scientific entanglement is the chapter where Rieppel examines the day-to-day operations in these new large museums, showing how they mimicked corporate management practices. He examines how dig sites were more carefully documented on grid maps, how material in transit was labelled and databased in ledgers and filing systems (computers were still far in the future), and how curators tried to conserve as much information as possible about the context in which fossils were found. With well-funded expeditions bringing in huge quantities of material, some sort of oversight was vital to make sense of the data pouring into museums.

Although most of the book is careful historical documentation, chapter 5 sees Rieppel do his own share of reinterpretation. While various authors have argued that museum exhibitions of this era (showing fearsome dinosaurs engaged in epic struggle) were symbolic for the rise of capitalism and economic survival of the fittest, Rieppel argues the opposite: their extinction was a symbol of a bygone era. In the same way that the extinction of the dinosaurs had allowed the rise of mammals (which according to the zeitgeist were obviously superior), so the economic elite was forging a narrative justifying their rise to power, using vertebrate palaeontology exhibits as part of this. Or so, in short, goes his argument here.

“Another case of corporate and scientific entanglement is the […] day-to-day operations in these new large museums [which] mimicked corporate management practices.”

A short concluding chapter examines what happened to the interest in dinosaurs after the Great Depression almost brought these philanthropic museums to their knees. Although it mentions the dinosaur heresies kicked off by Robert Bakker and others, it focuses foremost on the spectacular feathered fossil finds from China and the insight that birds descended from dinosaurs.

I concluded my review of American Dinosaur Abroad by writing that, together with King of the Dinosaur Hunters, these books form a recent triptych of palaeontology at the turn of the 19th century. Of these three, Rieppel’s book is by far the most scholarly, though the conclusions at each chapter’s end are very helpful. It is also a book that is not exclusively about dinosaurs as Rieppel brings a broad perspective to the topic – his thorough and useful notes often read like mini-literature reviews. I have only touched upon a handful of the many fascinating observations and ideas in this book. Readers with an interest in science history, museology, and the history of palaeontology are well-served by this book.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Assembling the Dinosaur hardback, ebook, audiobook or audio CD

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If you visited the London Natural History Museum sometime before 2015 you will have been greeted by the skeleton of a sauropod dinosaur: a plaster cast of Diplodocus affectionately nicknamed Dippy. Dippy has left the building but is not the only such cast in existence. Historian Ilja Nieuwland here traces the little-known history of the philanthropic campaign that saw Scottish-born business magnate Andrew Carnegie donate plaster casts to museums around the world. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, he examines Carnegie’s reasons and the response of the recipients and the general audience, adding a valuable and surprisingly interesting chapter to the history of palaeontology as a discipline.

American Dinosaur Abroad: A Cultural History of Carnegie’s Plaster Diplodocus, written by Ilja Nieuwland, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in April 2019 (hardback, 318 pages)

This book slots in beautifully with several recent books on the history of American palaeontology around the turn of the 19th century. Carnegie’s campaign is part of a larger story of business tycoons using dinosaur fossils to impress and I am reviewing this book back-to-back with Lukas Rieppel’s Assembling the Dinosaur. Furthermore, this book starts off pretty much where the biography of American fossil collector John Bell Hatcher ended. One of the last things Hatcher did before his death was to contribute to making the first plaster cast that Carnegie would donate.

But let us back up a little. Who was Andrew Carnegie, and why was he handing out plaster casts of dinosaurs as if they were going out of fashion? There are several biographies, but Nieuwland draws heavily on Nasaw’s monstrously large 900-page book, simply called Andrew Carnegie. In very short, Carnegie was born in Scotland in 1835, after which his family emigrated to Pennsylvania when he was 12. His career is the classic rags-to-riches story: making his fortunes first in oil and then in steel production, he rapidly became one of the world’s wealthiest people. Not content to just swim in the money, he retired early and set off on a programme of philanthropy, funding museums, the arts, and especially libraries (some 2,500 of them, apparently!) He was particularly keen to resolve global conflict through the creation of an international tribunal. To that end, he mingled, and loved to be seen mingling, with politicians and royalty. Carnegie’s philanthropic activities thus served an ulterior motive.

“Who was Andrew Carnegie, and why was he handing out plaster casts of dinosaurs as if they were going out of fashion?”

In 1886, Carnegie funded the building of a library in his hometown of Pittsburgh, which brought him in contact with William Jacob Holland, the chancellor of the local university. Holland urged Carnegie to think bigger and the library turned into a number of scientific institutes, including ultimately The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, headed by Holland. And this is where Diplodocus enters the story.

The infamous Bone Wars between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh had at this point died down somewhat and had yielded large sauropod fossils. A shift in power was taking place in palaeontology from individual scientists to large institutes financed by wealthy patrons such as Carnegie who used palaeontology as a public relations exercise. And Carnegie was keen to get himself one of those newfangled sauropods for his museum, to compete with displays in other museums. It was Hatcher who found and described Diplodocus carnegii while employed by Holland and Carnegie.

A chance visit by the English king Edward VII to the Carnegie household in Skibo, Scotland, resulted in what Nieuwland dryly describes as “His Majesty notices a drawing”. Yes, the King would very much like one of these skeletons for the British Museum. Carnegie wasted no time and after deliberation with Holland, the latter suggested that making a cast might be more feasible than trying to find another complete specimen in the field. And while we are at it, Holland suggested, we could make multiple casts and give them to other heads of state. And so it came to pass.

“A chance visit by the English King Edward VII to the Carnegie household […] resulted in what Nieuwland dryly describes as “His Majesty notices a drawing”. Yes, the King would very much like one of these skeletons for the British Museum.”

From here on Nieuwland’s book proceeds largely chronologically. While the original went on display in Pittsburgh, the first cast was unveiled very successfully in London in 1903, followed over the next decade by Germany, France, an attempt in Brazil that never materialised, Austria, Italy, Russia, Argentina, Spain, and, two decades later, Mexico. Nieuwland goes into great detail here, mining historical archives, correspondence, and newspaper articles to reveal how these gifts were received, what the media had to say about them, and how they played into the contemporary imagination in satire, art, and journalism.

I admit I was initially a bit sceptical about the book’s pitch: how interesting can it be to read about the history of a plaster cast? As it turns out, really interesting. Nieuwland has a knack for presenting a lively and atmospheric picture of the 19th century. His introduction sets the tone when he ruefully remarks that: “This was perhaps the last time in human history in which unfettered trust in scientific method and advances could be considered commonplace, and one in which the pursuit of scientific knowledge carried a prestige it never regained.” Rare period photographs liven up Nieuwland’s narrative further.

“Once [Carnegie’s] requirement – that the request for a cast was publicly communicated by a head of state – was met, the actual gifting and unveiling of the cast was a formality left to Holland and his team to sort out. “

The Diplodocus casts, however, are but a token in this story. It was interesting to see how subsequent unveilings went mostly little reported and hardly noticed. The Parisians, who absolutely adored “their” Diplodocus, are the exception and stand in stark contrast to the Austrians who felt the cast was almost foisted upon them. But this did not bother Carnegie in the least, they were just a means to an end. Once his requirement – that the request for a cast was publicly communicated by a head of state – was met, the actual gifting and unveiling of the cast was a formality left to Holland and his team to sort out. And even receiving heads of state were usually not present here. Partially the novelty of these donations quickly wore off, partially newer and larger fossils demanded attention (Germany, for example, unearthed large fossils in East Africa).

Similarly, the biology of Diplodocus is not the focus of this story (readers can refer to Biology of the Sauropod Dinosaurs and The Sauropod Dinosaurs instead), nor was it something that particularly interested Carnegie. Nieuwland describes his book as an “object biography”. The one episode where the science intersects with these casts was when American palaeontologist Oliver Perry Hay started questioning its life reconstruction, arguing for a more reptilian, sprawling posture. This argument was enthusiastically embraced in Germany and nearly resulted in a diplomatic spat between the US and Germany over whose approach to palaeontology was superior, combining scientific with political and ideological arguments. The period Nieuwland describes here is also of interest to palaeontologists as this is where the idea of sauropods living an aquatic lifestyle was seriously, though not universally, considered. Despite what some seem to think, that idea has now been thoroughly discredited.

American Dinosaur Abroad offers a fascinating and well-researched look into palaeontology at the turn of the 19th century, and how interest in dinosaurs reverberated, and was used, outside of scientific circles. If you have any interest in the history of palaeontology as a discipline this book shines a light on a little-known episode. And while you are it, I highly recommend you pick up King of the Dinosaur Hunters and Assembling the Dinosaur. The three form a perfect triptych.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

American Dinosaur Abroad hardback or ebook

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“King of the Dinosaur Hunters: The Life of John Bell Hatcher and the Discoveries that Shaped Paleontology“, written by Lowell Dingus, published by Pegasus Books in December 2018 (hardback, 520 pages)

Dingus first sets the stage by introducing Cope, Marsh and the Bone Wars (for fuller historical accounts, see The Bonehunters’ Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age and The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between ED Cope and OC Marsh and the Rise of American Science). Hatcher comes into the picture midway through this scientific feud, when Marsh employs the then 22-year-old Hatcher in 1884. Following the three major stages of Hatcher’s career, Dingus has split his book into three sections. The archives of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Princeton University, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History contain voluminous correspondence between Hatcher and his various employers. Closely examining these, Dingus gives an almost blow-by-blow account of Hatcher’s work, enumerating the fossils uncovered, the number of crates shipped back from field locations, and all the budgetary details involved.

Numerous excerpts from letters reveal the hardships that Hatcher exposed himself to as he worked nearly year-round in the field, braving heavy rain, blizzards, and biting cold. A recurring refrain in the early stages seemed to be Marsh’s tardiness in providing funds in a timely manner, as witnessed by Hatcher’s frequent prickly admonishments. Though from a modest background, Hatcher was never afraid to speak his mind and would openly bicker with his superiors in private correspondence and scientific publications.

I admit that after the first 100-or-so pages I was bit taken aback. King of the Dinosaur Hunters is not necessarily a light read as Dingus goes into comprehensive detail. Things become more and more interesting though as you keep reading. By 1893, Hatcher, increasingly dissatisfied, left Marsh’s employ after nine years to work at Princeton University for William Berryman Scott, a disciple of Marsh’s archrival Cope. It paid off handsomely for Hatcher, as he negotiated a position as curator of vertebrate palaeontology that allowed him to oversee the curation and preparation of fossils, do research on them, and publish his own findings. Several extended stints to Patagonia followed as he collected tremendous amounts of fossil material from southern South America.

“[…] Hatcher exposed himself to hardships as he worked nearly year-round in the field, braving heavy rain, blizzards, and biting cold”

Throughout, he had frequent spats with the president of the American Museum of Natural History, Henry Fairfield Osborn, who was also a close friend of his employer Scott. By 1899 things had again come to a head and Hatcher once more jumped ship, ending up working for William J. Holland, the director of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. This last phase of his career is where Hatcher’s star really rose as he became a fully-fledged curator, sending out his own teams of bone hunters and publishing numerous scientific papers and monographs. This is also where other famous names enter the picture, such as competing hotshot Barnum Brown (see Dingus’s other biography Barnum Brown: The Man Who Discovered Tyrannosaurus rex, co-authored with Mark Norell), and palaeoartist Charles R. Knight whom Hatcher employed to prepare illustrations of Triceratops (one of which graces the dust jacket of this book).

As discussed in my reviews of Patrons of Paleontology: How Government Support Shaped a Science, American Dinosaur Abroad: A Cultural History of Carnegie’s Plaster Diplodocus, and Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle, Hatcher’s work at the Carnegie Museum was a prime example of how this branch of science was enabled by the financial support of wealthy business tycoons such as Andrew Carnegie, who did a spot of philanthropy on the side. Furthermore, Dingus’s book answers many of the questions I raised in my review of Patrons of Palaeontology on the costs of expeditions versus the costs of publications.

The picture that emerges of Hatcher is of a person who was at times testy, tempestuous, and easily offended. At the same time, he was furiously dedicated to his craft and his employer, whoever that happened to be. Though he married and had children, he barely saw his family, regularly spending 10-11 months per year crisscrossing the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains region of the US, and later Patagonia. His sudden death in 1904 tragically cut short a blossoming career that could have been even more influential.

“The picture that emerges of Hatcher is of a person who was […] testy, tempestuous and easily offended [but also] furiously dedicated to his craft and his employer.”

Even so, Hatcher left a tremendous legacy, and many of the fossils he collected are on public display to this day in prominent American museums and elsewhere. “Dippy”, the dinosaur skeleton that until recently greeted you at the entrance of the London Natural History Museum, is a cast from the Diplodocus carnegii skeletal mount that was collected under Hatcher’s supervision (see also Dippy: The Tale of a Museum Icon). In the end, Hatcher and his crews collected over 8000 specimens that represented many new species and became the basis for museum collections that are relevant to this day. And this era has been hailed as a second dinosaur rush (see also The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush: Museums and Paleontology in America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century).

Dingus, in turn, has written a definitive biography of exhaustive detail. Far more than a casual read, he provides meticulous documentation, as evidenced by a 14-page glossary of genera opening the book, current museum catalogue numbers throughout the text, appendices that list contracts and agreements between Marsh and Hatcher and year-by-year lists of all the specimens collected, and a separate bibliography for Hatcher.

This level of detail should delight palaeontologists and science historians. But what elevates this book from a mere catalogue of facts and achievements are the beforementioned excerpts and the rich reading that Dingus provides of conditions in the field, the hardships and frustrations, as well as the tremendous strokes of luck. Though remembered by vertebrate palaeontologists, this biography will reacquaint the wider public with this legendary bone hunter and convinces why Hatcher is worthy of the epithet “King of the Dinosaur Hunters”.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

King of the Dinosaur Hunters hardback, paperback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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