Terrible Lizard, by Deborah Cadbury

Terrible Lizard: The First Dinosaur Hunters and the Birth of a New Science, by Deborah Cadbury
Henry Holt and Company, 2000 (first published in Great Britain as The Dinosaur Hunters)
326 pages plus a few b&w photos scattered throughout book, Notes and Sources, Select biblioraphy and index


Description
In 1812 a twelve-year-old girl named Mary Anning was collecting fossils for her father beneath the cliffs of Dorset when she discovered the outline of a lizardlike skeleton embedded in the limestone. Working with a small hammer, she unearthed a giant prehistoric animal seventeen feet in length.

News of her descovery baffled scholars and attracted the attention of the REverend William Buckland, an eccentric Oxford naturalist known for his interest in geology or "undergroundology" as he called it. Buckland eagerly used Mary's find and other remnant fossils to set in motion a quest to understand the world before Noah's flood, though his inquiry was in fact an attempt to prove the accuracy of the biblical record (the scriptures alone were the key to understanding history in his view, and fossils were interpreted in this context.)

Meanwhile, another naturalist, Gideon Mantell, a poor country doctor, uncovered giant petrified bones in a Sussex quarry and became obsessed with the ancient past that, he came to realize, must once have been teeming with creatures up to seventy feet long. Initially scorned by thes cientific establishment, Mantell risked his reputation and career to reveal his vision of the lost world of reptiles.

Despite their efforts, it was the eminent anatomist Richard Owen, patronized by royalty, the prime minister, and the aristocracy, who claimed the credit for the discovery of the dinosaurs. Through guile, political intrigue, and brilliant scientific insight, Owen rose from surgeon's apprentice in Lancaster to the highest echelons of society and was feted as the man who gave the extinct creatures their name, dinosaur or "terrible lizard."

Deborahh Cadbury's lively story re-creates the bitter food between Mantell and Owen, which drove one of them to despair and ruin and secured for the other unrivaled international acclaim. Their struggle brought to light the age of dinosaurs and created a new science that would forever change man's perception of his place in the universe.

Table of Contents
Picture Credits
Acknowledgments
Part 1
1. An ocean turned to stone
2. The World in a pebble
3. Toast of mice and crocodiles for tea
4. The Subterranean forest
5. The Giant Saurians
Part 2
6. The young contender
7. Satan's Creatures
8. The GEological Age of reptiles
9. Nature, red in tooth and claw
10. Nil Desperandum
Part 3
11. Dinosauria
12. The Arch-hater
13. Dinomania
14. Nature without God?
Epilogue
Notes and sources
Select bibliography
Index

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