front cover of Assembling the Dinosaur
Assembling the Dinosaur
Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle
Lukas Rieppel
Harvard University Press, 2019

A lively account of how dinosaurs became a symbol of American power and prosperity and gripped the popular imagination during the Gilded Age, when their fossil remains were collected and displayed in museums financed by North America’s wealthiest business tycoons.

Although dinosaur fossils were first found in England, a series of dramatic discoveries during the late 1800s turned North America into a world center for vertebrate paleontology. At the same time, the United States emerged as the world’s largest industrial economy, and creatures like Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus, and Triceratops became emblems of American capitalism. Large, fierce, and spectacular, American dinosaurs dominated the popular imagination, making front-page headlines and appearing in feature films.

Assembling the Dinosaur follows dinosaur fossils from the field to the museum and into the commercial culture of North America’s Gilded Age. Business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan made common cause with vertebrate paleontologists to capitalize on the widespread appeal of dinosaurs, using them to project American exceptionalism back into prehistory. Learning from the show-stopping techniques of P. T. Barnum, museums exhibited dinosaurs to attract, entertain, and educate the public. By assembling the skeletons of dinosaurs into eye-catching displays, wealthy industrialists sought to cement their own reputations as generous benefactors of science, showing that modern capitalism could produce public goods in addition to profits. Behind the scenes, museums adopted corporate management practices to control the movement of dinosaur bones, restricting their circulation to influence their meaning and value in popular culture.

Tracing the entwined relationship of dinosaurs, capitalism, and culture during the Gilded Age, Lukas Rieppel reveals the outsized role these giant reptiles played during one of the most consequential periods in American history.

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front cover of Dinosaur
Dinosaur
Four Seasons on the Green and Yampa Rivers
Hal Crimmel
University of Arizona Press, 2007
Over a hundred million years ago, the area that is now Dinosaur National Monument attracted the behemoth creatures of its namesake with its plentiful supply of food and water. Renowned for its world- famous fossil quarry, Dinosaur National Monument is also home to two of the West’s legendary whitewater rivers: the Yampa and the Green. In this new addition to the Desert Places series, river runner and author Hal Crimmel, along with photographer Steve Gaffney, invite readers to partake in the beauty of Dinosaur National Monument’s remote, rapids-filled canyons, and wonder at the unique ecological niches found in this high desert oasis.

Gaffney’s reflective photographs emphasize the rough perfection of the landscape; Crimmel’s pensive meditations and his river expertise combine to create a rare point of view, one that ventures into places the guidebooks don’t go. But this narrative is more than tribute—it is a reminder of the fragile nature of desert places. Crimmel lyrically combines his descriptions with an examination of the complex issues relevant to managing public lands—invasive species, tourism, dams, endangered flora and fauna—to address the contradictions inherent in “managed wilderness.” Over four seasons and multiple trips, Crimmel and Gaffney have captured the rivers’ sense of place, creating a portrait of a dazzling high desert landscape that needs to be appreciated and protected.
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front cover of Dinosaur in a Haystack
Dinosaur in a Haystack
Reflections in Natural History
Stephen Jay Gould
Harvard University Press, 2011
From fads to fungus, baseball to beeswax, Gould always circles back to the great themes of time, change, and history, carrying readers home to the centering theme of evolution.
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