Show me the bone
Subtitle: reconstructing prehistoric monsters in nineteenth-century Britain and America
By: Gowan Dawson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016
Place of publication: Chicago; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 476
ISBN-13: 9780226332734; 9780226332871
Copyright date: 2016
Subjects: Paleontologists; Paleontology; Biography; History
Description: Nineteenth-century paleontologists, such as Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen, were heralded as scientific virtuosos, sometimes even veritable wizards, capable of resurrecting the denizens of an ancient past from a mere glance at a fragmentary bone. Such extraordinary feats of predictive reasoning relied on the law of correlation, which proposed that each element of an animal corresponds mutually with each of the others, so that a carnivorous tooth must be accompanied by a certain kind of jawbone, neck, stomach, limbs and feet. 'Show Me the Bone' tells the story of the rise and fall of this famous claim.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Correlation crosses the Channel; title: Fragments of design; title: Discovering the dinornis; title: Paleontology in parts; title: Correlation at the Crystal Palace; title: Correlation under siege; title: The problems of popularization; title: Unfortunate allies; title: Evolutionary modifications; title: Prophecies of the past.