History of the Palaeosciences
palaeontology and palaeoanthropology in their historical context
Humans have interacted with the deep past since prehistoric times. Only recently, in 2024, Brazilian researchers described a site where pre-colonial native populations had left petroglyphs right next to, and in association with, fossilised dinosaur footprints. Other archaeological evidence points to deliberate fossil collection by the Maya people and perhaps even by Neanderthals; fossils are assumed to have inspired myths and folklore in India, the Mediterranean, and North America.
During the rise of Western natural science, the fossil record played an essential role for the development of the theory of evolution, the study of human origins, and the replacement of Biblical and creationist accounts with an awareness for the deep past of our planet. In this pursuit, Western naturalists often benefited from the opportunities which the domination of foreign territories and populations afforded them for the collection of specimens; be it under overseas colonialism, internal colonialism, or military occupation. Scientists studying human evolution often propagated racial science that was often increasingly receptive to the theory evolution but placed non-white populations into an inferior, "more primitive" stage of evolution which white Europeans had exceeded.
I am curious about the history of the palaeosciences:
- from a paradigmatic standpoint that zooms in on our ideas about the history of life on this planet and our own species at a given time, and how they themselves evolve;
- from a critical standpoint that inquires about the embeddedness of what are often considered neutral, apolitical sciences in social and political struggles; and
- from a legal history standpoint that studies the historical development of regulation concerning objects of palaeontological interest in light of their larger context in a given historical moment.
Among other things, I am a member of the Popularizing Palaeontology network which brings together historians of science, palaeontologists, and palaeoartists to study the reception of the palaeosciences in public audiences.
Bibliography
-
Ashby, Jack, and Rebecca Machin. “Legacies of Colonial Violence in Natural History Collections.” Journal of Natural Science Collections 8 (2021): 44–54.
Donovan, Stephen K. “History of Palaeontology.” In Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2014.
Knell, Simon J. “Consuming Fossils and Museums in Early Nineteenth-Century England.” In Mueums in the Material World, edited by Simon J. Knell, 261–73. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2007.
Heumann, Ina, Mareike Vennen, and Holger Stoecker, eds. Deconstructing Dinosaurs: The History of the German Tendaguru Expedition and Its Finds, 1906-2023. Brill, 2024.
Maier, Gerhard. African Dinosaurs Unearthed: The Tendaguru Expeditions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
Manias, Chris. “Building Baluchitherium and Indricotherium: Imperial and International Networks in Early-Twentieth Century Paleontology.” Journal of the History of Biology 48, no. 2 (2015): 237–78.
———. “Jesuit Scientists and Mongolian Fossils: The French Paleontological Missions in China, 1923–1928.” Isis 108, no. 2 (June 1, 2017): 307–32. https://doi.org/10.1086/692677.
———. “Reconstructing an Incomparable Organism: The Chalicothere in Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Palaeontology.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40, no. 1 (January 23, 2018): 22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0187-0.
———. The Age of Mammals: International Paleontology in the Long Nineteenth Century. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023.
Monarrez, Pedro M., Joshua B. Zimmt, Annaka M. Clement, William Gearty, John J. Jacisin, Kelsey M. Jenkins, Kristopher M. Kusnerik, et al. “Our Past Creates Our Present: A Brief Overview of Racism and Colonialism in Western Paleontology.” Paleobiology 48, no. 2 (May 2022): 173–85. https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2021.28.
Nair, Savithri Preetha. “‘Eyes and No Eyes’: Siwalik Fossil Collecting and the Crafting of Indian Palaeontology (1830–1847).” Science in Context 18, no. 3 (September 2005): 359–92. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026988970500058X.
Roolf, Christoph. “The Attempted Theft of Dinosaur Skeletons during the German Occupation of Belgium (1914-1918) and Some Other Cases of Looting Cultural Possessions of Natural History.” In Bernissart Dinosaurs and Early Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems, edited by Pascal Godefroit, 21–34. Life of the Past. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.
Rudwick, Martin J. The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. London: Macdonald, 1972.
Smith, Laura Elizabeth, and E. Allen Driggers. “‘Ex Pede Herculem’: Sloths, Slavery, and Southern Fossil Collection in the Nineteenth Century.” Earth Sciences History 42, no. 1 (April 20, 2023): 63–83. https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-42.1.63.
Wall, Wilson J. Investigating Fossils: A History of Palaeontology. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119828624.
Yen, Hsiao-pei. “Fossils and Sovereignty: Science Diplomacy and the Politics of Deep Time in the Sino-American Fossil Dispute of the 1920s.” Isis 115, no. 1 (March 2024): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1086/729176.
-
Debus, Allen A. Dinosaurs Ever Evolving: The Changing Face of Prehistoric Animals in Popular Culture. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016.
Fallon, Richard. “Decadent Dinosaurs: Directed Evolution in British and North American Literature, 1890s–1970s.” Twentieth Century Literature 70, no. 1 (March 1, 2024): 55–84. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-11098327.
Geer, Alexandra van der, Michael Dermitzakis, and John de Vos. “Fossil Folklore from India: The Siwalik Hills and the Mahâbhârata.” Folklore 119, no. 1 (2008): 71–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/00155870701806225.
Laurence, Alison. “Of Dinosaurs and Intergenerational Culture Wars: Dinomania, Nostalgia, and the ‘Missionary Lizards’ of Young Earth Creationism.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, May 21, 2024, 03080188241252315. https://doi.org/10.1177/03080188241252315.
Mayor, Adrienne. Fossil Legends of the First Americans. Fossil Legends of the First Americans. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400849314.
———. The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton University Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400838448.
Mergen, Bernard. “Diplodocus Carnegiei Meets Andrew Carnegie: The Paleontologist as Culture Hero.” Journal of Popular Culture 2, no. 4 (1969): 578.
Mitchell, W. J. T. The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Moore, Randy. Dinosaurs by the Decades: A Chronology of the Dinosaur in Science and Popular Culture. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2014.
Nabavizadeh, Ali. “The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and the Portrayal of Prehistoric Life and Paleontology in Film.” In The Jurassic Park Book: New Perspectives on the Classic 1990s Blockbuster, edited by Matthew Melia. Bloomsbury, 2024. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501384820.
Romano, Marco. “Fossils as a Source of Myths, Legends and Folklore.” Rendiconti Online Della Società Geologica Italiana 62 (March 2024): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3301/ROL.2024.11.
Sommer, Marianne. “The Lost World as Laboratory: The Politics of Evolution between Science and Fiction in the Early Decades of Twentieth-Century America.” Configurations 15, no. 3 (2007): 299–329. https://doi.org/10.1353/con.0.0033.
Vennen, Mareike. “Auf Dinosaurierjagd: Wissenschaft, Museum Und Unterhaltungsindustrie.” In Dinosaurierfragmente: Zur Geschichte Der Tendaguru-Expedition Und Ihrer Objekte, 1906-2018, edited by Ina Heumann, Holger Stoecker, Marco Tamborini, and Mareike Vennen, 209–29. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2018.
Williams, Paige. The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy. Hachette Books, 2018.