The Dragon Seekers: The Discovery of Dinosaurs Before Darwin - Softcover

McGowan, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349117101 ISBN 13: 9780349117102

Publisher: Abacus, 2003

Synopsis

THE DRAGON SEEKERS is a book about the early fossilists, that extraordinary group of individuals who first identified the dinosaurs and whose discoveries helped pave the way for Darwin, and the publication of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES in 1859.
THE DRAGON SEEKERS chronicles the story of a circle of English men and - famously - one woman whose palaeontological findings transformed people's perceptions of geological history and the remote past. Its intriguing and eccentric group of characters includes Mary Anning, an uneducated woman who became one of the most successful fossil collectors of all time: Giles Hawkings, the black sheep of palaeontology; and the mentally unstable William Buckland, discoverer of the Megalosaurus, the world's first dinosaur. It is an inspiring and fascinating story that begins with the discovery of a few random bones and leads up to the recognition that giant lizards once roamed and dominated the earth. Previous books have focused on individual fossilists. THE DRAGON SEEKERS treats them as a distinct group charting their rivalries alongside their discoveries.

About this title

Review

A most valuable guide to the mysteries of our own past. I warmly recommend it to all who wonder whence our modern world developed (John Fowles)

An informative and exciting account...there is an affecting lyrical beauty to McGowan's historical account (LOS ANGELES TIMES)

[McGowan] writes with livliness and immediacy. The excitement those early 'dragon seeker s' must have felt when making a particularly significant discovery is well-conveyed. (IRISH TIMES)

The book does a good job of lifting the lid on what seemed like an intriguing sideline at the time, but eventually became one of the most important cornerstones of our current understanding of the natural world. (FOCUS)

Book Description

*Subtitle: The Discovery of Dinosaurs during the prelude to Darwin.
** The dramatic story of how a group of 19th C. fossilists forever changed our view of history - and laid the groundwork for the Darwinian revolution.

Edition details

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0349117101
• ISBN 13: 9780349117102
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288