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Since fossils have presumably existed for millions of years, why don't we see much paleontological thought from ancient writers? Classics scholar Adrienne Mayor suggests that we can, in fact, learn much about the Greek and Roman attitudes toward fossils if we turn to a surprising source of data and theory: their myths. In The First Fossil Hunters, she explores likely connections between the rich fossil beds around the Mediterranean and tales of griffins and giants originating in the classical world. Striking similarities exist between the Protoceratops skeletons of the Gobi Desert and the legends of the gold-hoarding griffin told by nomadic people of the region, and the fossilized remains of giant Miocene mammals could be taken for the heroes and monsters of earlier times. Mayor makes her case well, but, as with all interpretive science, the arguments are inconclusive. Still, her novel reading of ancient myth--and her critique of the modern scientific mythology that seeks to explain the lack of classical paleontological thinking--is compelling and thought-provoking.

The final chapter of The First Fossil Hunters is an engrossing and occasionally quite funny look at "Paleontological Fictions" dating back several thousand years; the false tritons and centaurs give P.T. Barnum and his successors a much longer genealogy than previously thought. Whether or not you accept Mayor's analysis of Greek and Roman thinking, The First Fossil Hunters should open your eyes to new possibilities about our distant past. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Scientific American
The history of paleontology, as it is usually seen, starts with the work of French naturalist Georges Cuvier some 200 years ago. Mayor, a classical folklorist, moves the date back to the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. "The ancients collected, measured, displayed, and pondered the bones of extinct beasts," she writes, "and they recorded their discoveries and imaginative interpretations of the fossil remains in numerous writings that survive today." Among the beasts whose bones they pondered were giant giraffes, mammoths and mastodons. Mayor also proposes that the griffin of classical folklore, described in the legends as having the body of a lion and the beak of an eagle, "was based on illiterate nomads' observations of dinosaur skeletons in the deserts of Central Asia." And she tells of purely imaginary creatures of the classical period, such as the triton and the centaur. But her focus is on what the ancients made of the bones of real animals. Advances in classical studies and paleontology, she says, "now make it possible to restore the ancient fossil investigations to their rightful place in the history of science."

EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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First Sentence:
I BOARDED the overnight ferry from Athens to Samos, a Greek island just off the coast of Turkey, in the late summer. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
paleontological fictions, oversize bones, ancient paleontology, fossil femur, beaked dinosaurs, bone rush, fossil exposures, steppe mammoth, extraordinary bones, large fossil bones, giant bones, colossal bones, modern paleontology, giant giraffes, prehistoric elephants, heroic burials, paleontological museum, remarkable bones, immense bones, huge remains, unusual remains, paleontological discoveries, petrified bones, enormous bones, huge bones Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Asia Minor, Black Sea, North Africa, Monster of Troy, Bronze Age, Ice Age, Nikos Solounias, American Museum of Natural History, Jack Horner, Central Asia, Roman Empire, Siwalik Hills, Trojan War, Altai Mountains, Aristotle University, Calydonian Boar, Evangelia Tsoukala, Wadi Natrun, Apollonius of Tyana, Barnum Brown, David Reese, Roy Chapman Andrews, Courtesy Department of Library Services, Dale Russell, Michele Mayor Angel New!
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