Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World (Text Only Edition)
    Unavailable
    The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World (Text Only Edition)
    Unavailable
    The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World (Text Only Edition)
    Ebook460 pages7 hours

    The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World (Text Only Edition)

    By Deborah Cadbury

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 31, 2012
    ISBN9780007388943
    Unavailable
    The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World (Text Only Edition)
    Author

    Deborah Cadbury

    Deborah Cadbury is the award-winning TV science producer for the BBC, including Horizon for which she won an Emmy . She is also the highly-acclaimed author of ‘The Seven Wonders of the Industrial World’, ‘The Feminisation of Nature’, ‘The Dinosaur Hunters’, ‘The Lost King of France’ and ‘Space Race’.

    Read more from Deborah Cadbury

    Related to The Dinosaur Hunters

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tripping The Light Fintastic

      Jul 5, 2023

      ON a peaceful summer’s evening, a beautiful girl with long, golden hair floated in a rockpool near Cury in Cornwall, sobbing inconsolably. An old man drew near and, startled, she leapt, revealing a hint of fish tail. Keen to help a damsel in distress

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Warning To The Fortean

      Jul 14, 2022

      A Warning To The Fortean
      9 min read

    • Article

      Pirate Queens

      Jul 28, 2022

      Pirate Queens
      6 min read

    • Article

      What Lies Beneath

      Feb 18, 2020

      What Lies Beneath
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Mar 24, 2021

      REGARDING the achievements of rural vicars (‘Cut from the country cloth’, February 10), I would draw your attention to Revd John Thorneycroft Hartley. He is the only clergyman to win Wimbledon, in 1879 and 1880, and was runner-up in 1881, despite suf

      3 min read

    • Article

      When The Tide Turned

      May 25, 2022

      FIONA GELL is a marine biologist and published poet—a winning combination, as this memoir proves. It tells how a love of the sea, inseparable from a Manx childhood, turned the author into the scientist who saw her campaign to protect Ramsey Bay (as t

      5 min read

    • Article

      Fatal Enchantment

      Apr 1, 2024

      Fatal Enchantment
      4 min read

    • Article

      Living On The Edge

      Jul 6, 2022

      Living On The Edge
      9 min read

    • Article

      Town & Country Notebook

      Feb 14, 2024

      1) What would one measure using a pluviometer? 2) Which English Prime Minister had the first names William Ewart? 3) What institution is known as the ‘old lady of Threadneedle Street’? 4) ‘Fill-dike’ is a rural name for which month? 5) What are Rum,

      4 min read

    • Article

      When I Find Hidden Gems, I Destroy Them

      Jul 28, 2021

      Three people may keep a secret if two of them are dead, said Benjamin Franklin. The sickening truth about travel writers is that they reveal secret locations in exchange for a free trip. It’s a Faustian pact and I must admit I bear some guilt in this

      3 min read

    • Article

      Haunted New Hampshire

      Nov 29, 2022

      Haunted New Hampshire
      5 min read

    • Article

      Why Did Farming Go Wrong?

      Jul 6, 2022

      Why Did Farming Go Wrong?
      5 min read

    • Article

      Myths And Monsters

      Dec 22, 2020

      Myths And Monsters
      4 min read

    • Article

      Map Of Horrors

      May 11, 2021

      Map Of Horrors
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Deer Dilemma

      Jan 17, 2024

      The Deer Dilemma
      5 min read

    • Article

      History Set In Stone

      Nov 29, 2019

      History Set In Stone
      4 min read

    • Article

      On The Smugglers’ Trail

      Jun 9, 2023

      On The Smugglers’ Trail
      5 min read

    • Article

      Town & Country Notebook

      Mar 27, 2024

      1) In which year did Elizabeth II succeed to the throne? 2) Greensleeves and Early Windsor are varieties of what fruit? 3) In which county is Reading? 4) The Magna Carta was written in which language? 5) What weather-related event can also be describ

      4 min read

    • Article

      Where Will Your Reading Take You?

      Apr 8, 2022

      by Peter Higginbotham A survey in 1776 recorded almost 2,000 parish workhouses operating in England, while the number in Wales was just 19. The New Poor Law of 1834 proved just as unattractive in much of Wales – some parts of the country resisted pro

      5 min read

    • Article

      They Were One-offs

      Apr 6, 2022

      HOW I wish I’d written this book! Matthew Kelly celebrates four women whose work created the organisations and attitudes to conservation we take for granted today. Two are well known, two are not; all their stories enrich us. The well-known two are O

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Lasting Impression

      Feb 15, 2024

      Your new novel was inspired by the real story of Mary Anning (right). What was it about Anning that you found compelling? I’m intrigued by people who don’t fit the norm. Mary Anning, as well as being one of the greatest ‘fossilists’, has been referre

      1 min read

    • Article

      Join Our Podcast Adventures

      Apr 2, 2020

      Join Our Podcast Adventures
      2 min read

    Reviews for The Dinosaur Hunters

    4/5

    77 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This is an account of the early discoveries of fossils of dinosaurs and other early creatures, and the evolution (pardonable pun) of knowledge of and thought about the early history of life on earth, throughout the first half of the 19th century. Two key early discoveries are those of the icthyosaur by Mary Anning in Lyme Regis, and the iguanadon by Gideon Mantell in Lewes in Sussex. These two come across as appealing and very ordinary human individuals, often taken advantage of by others. This is especially so for Anning, discovering fossils very early on as a girl and young woman in the 1810s and 20s; but also in a different way for Mantell, who, lacking the advantages of inherited wealth and free time of other early pioneers in the field, had to make his mark as a country doctor, helping and sometimes saving the lives of his poor patients, while trying in his spare time to pursue his passion for geology, a passion that strained his happy marriage to eventual breaking point.One of the key themes as the book goes on is the bitter rivalry between Mantell and anatomist Richard Owen, coiner of the word "dinosaur" and later the founder and first director of the Natural History Museum in London. Owen, while a brilliant man in his own right, was also unscrupulous in claiming credit for discoveries made by Mantell and others, and diminishing their achievements for the sake of his own self-aggrandisement; this worked for him, and he became tutor to Queen Victoria's children, and played a pivotal role in the organisation of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Even after Mantell's tragic death in 1852, wracked by pain caused by being thrown from a carriage a decade earlier and injuring his back, and only able to function by managing the pain with opiates, Owen rubbished Mantell's work and character in an ostensibly anonymous obituary. In a bizarre and rather unsavoury twist of fate, Mantell's twisted spine ended up as an exhibit in Owen's collection. (as an aside, the spine remained in the Royal College of Surgeons until the mid-20th century; Cadbury says it was bombed in the Blitz, though other sources say it was voluntarily destroyed in 1969 due to lack of space). Another key theme in the book is the battle between science and religion, but it is not cast in the simple Darwinism vs. creationism paradigm; rather it was a gradual movement of the centre of gravity of mainstream scientific opinion along a spectrum of thought where, for much of the three or four decades before Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, the growing evidence for the development of forms of life and the relations between them was accepted (in the teeth of opposition from creationists), but along with an assumption that God provided the original spark for life in the first place and that he wrote the rules by which life forms developed (in modern parlance, "intelligent design"). Owen was an epitome of this view. Darwin and Huxley of course changed the paradigm in the 1860s and later, such that Owen's reputation was ironically itself trashed somewhat unfairly after his death in 1892, and his life's work dismissed due to his opposition to Darwinism.This was a fascinating read. Unfortunately this Kindle version lacked the illustrations in the print version (which I used to have, but which has annoyingly disappeared from my shelves!).
    • 5/5
      Deeply enjoyable book about the early fossil hunters. Buckland, a decent Christian and pioneer geologist always struggling to reconcile his faith with the findings as they come in, Owen the wicked schemer, brilliant but really only interested in building his own empire, Huxley the steelily efficient destroyer of anyone who got in the way of science and her hero, Mantell, who struggled on against heartbreaking difficulties. He could only work in his spare time, and had limited money and no academic backup. He couldn't tear himself away from the hunt despite it destroying his marriage and livelihood, but he at least treated others with consideration.Poignant incidental information about the death of Mantell's daughter and a sympathetic coverage of Mary Anning the unsung working class woman behind some of the finds.
    • 3/5
      Story of class & competition for glory over early dinosaur fossil finds. Very readable while comprehensively researched. Richard Owens comes out badly.Read Oct 2005
    • 5/5
      A very good read....I've wanted to get into the beginnings of geology through its start in England for some time and my recent trip to Lyme Regis ignited that fire. I'm starting off a bit slow, but this book along with a few others planned for down the road hopefully will be the way to go. Owen comes off as a creep, Mantell's wife is a loser, Cuvier, Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, etc. seem to be more balanced and fair. Nicely done.
    • 5/5
      Truly fabulous popular account of the scientific discoveries of dinosaurs, bringing in to great effect the undernoticed Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell instead of just the overbearing Richard Owen (who got his, in the end, but still). Excellently done and highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Chock full of dinosaurs! And cool 19th century science, when everything was a curiosity. So it's England and people have just started to realize that you could put fossils together to get giant skeletons. I was thinking about how insane that must have been -- nowadays, if you found a fossilized dinosaur skeleton in your backyard, it would be amazing but at least you'd start from the point of knowing what a dinosaur WAS. Imagine not knowing what dinosaurs were, and then finding the skeleton and realizing you had a FREAKISHLY GIANT LIZARD on your hands. This book mostly focused on Gideon Mantell, a mostly self-taught amateur fossil-hunter, and Richard Owen, also brilliant but apparently a bit of a jerk who did not play well with others. Overall, the book was interesting and painted a very understandable picture of the context in which this study and research was happening -- they were wrong about a lot of things (we now know), but the incredible thing is how much they got right.
    • 4/5
      A history of the scientists of the 19th century who began to understand the nature of the fossil shells and bones found in Britain, and developed the first theories of dinosaurs and geological history. The bitter rivalry between Gideon Mantell, who first discovered and collected many dinosaur bones, and Richard Owen, who gave them their name and got all the glory of their discovery, makes a good story. A good popular history of science, well illustrated, and an enjoyable read.