Title: Archetypes and ancestors
Subtitle: Palaeontology in Victorian London 1850-1875
First published: 1982
Description: How fossil animals were interpreted by rival sectors of British society, especially by pro- and anti-Darwinian factions. The ideological infighting was typified by T. H. Huxley and Richard Owen's clashes over dinosaurs, the ancestry of mammals and birds, and the kinship of mammal-like reptiles. Also discussed: William Henry Flower.--John Whittaker Hulke.--Harry Govier Seeley.--Charles Robert Darwin.--Edwin Ray Lankester.--Robert Edmond Grant.--John Phillips.--Ernst Haeckel.--St George Mivart.--William Boyd Dawkins.--William Kitchen Parker.--Herbert Spencer. First edition (ISBN 0-85634-121-5). The sales pitch for the subsequent University of Chicago Press edition (1984)--which contained minor corrections, mostly typographical--was "Biology Meets the Class War". Among the more interesting reviews: Social Studies of Science, 15 (1985), 181-200; Medical History, 26 (1982), 462-6; Times Higher Education Supplement, 28 Jan. 1983, 18; London Review of Books, 21 July-3 Aug. 1983, 11-12.
Subjects: Paleontology, History, Evolution, Darwinism, Fossil Mammals, Fossil Birds, Fossil Reptiles, Fossil Amphibians, Pterosaurs, Dinosaurs, Crocodiles, Mammal-like Reptiles, Archegosaurus, Archaeopteryx, Phylogeny, Paleontologie, Paleontology, great britain
Places: England, London
People: Richard Owen 1804-1892, Thomas Henry Huxley 1825-1895
Time periods: 1850-1875
LC classification: QE705.G7 D47 1984