The Dinosaur Hunters by Deborah Cadbury - Review by Mark Cornelius
This book is testament to my new rule, you should always give into temptation and buy that book in your hand. You may read and enjoy it at some point. This book has sat on my shelf for 20 years. It has implored me to read it. It has tried shaming me. Sometimes it has just ignored me, as part of a psychological game to catch my eye. It won in the end. And thankfully it did. This is an engaging book that was always a joy to pick up and spend time reading. The blurb on the front says that it is about the rivalry between two men, in their attempts to uncover the truth about the prehistoric world. It is to a degree. But it does not dominate the book, one half of that rivalry does not appear until page 129 of a book that is 326 pages long, while the other half dies on page 290. It is rather a story about the human side of scientific discovery. Moreover, it is about how progress was often impeded by the class system in Victorian England, and by a desire to make any findings consistent with Christian accounts of history in The Bible.
There are many interesting characters in the book. Mary Anning was a poor woman, who was exceptionally skilled at finding fossils around Lyme Regis where she lived. She made many important discoveries and she was rarely credited in the academic papers that described them. She established a small business selling fossils, but spent most of her life in poverty. Supposedly the tongue twister, “She sells sea-shells on the sea shore” is about her.
Gideon Mantell is one of the two rivals. He was a Sussex doctor, who was obsessed by fossils. He spent most of his spare time collecting them and trying to make a name for himself in the world of geology. Class prejudice and having to earn a living as a doctor were major obstacles to his ambition. Ultimately, his obsession destroyed his marriage. It was a great irony to me that he strived to establish a career studying the stoney remains of creatures that had died millions of years in the past, and would have gladly given up his role in which he saved countless lives and delivered many new ones into the world. Cadbury recounts an interesting story of one of the lives he saved. Mantell was in a courtroom and he happened to overhear the case of a woman and her lodger who had been sentenced to death for murdering the husband. Mantell suspected and was able to prove that the man had died of a heart attack. The woman received a free pardon. Sadly, the news came too late for the lodger who had already been hanged.
The other rival in the book is Richard Owen. He is now perhaps best known for coining the term “dinosaur”. He also campaigned for the establishment of the Natural History Museum. Like Mantell, he did not come from an aristocratic family, and so had to work hard to achieve success. Indeed, his fiancée’s mother delayed the marriage by some years on account of Owen’s lowly status and prospects. Owen was a brilliant anatomist. Through his substantial abilities and considerable labours he was able to secure work as an academic with time to study.
It is without doubt that Owen had great insights. He noticed that dinosaurs were a distinct anatomical grouping and were not just older and larger versions of modern-day reptiles. Despite his brilliance, he was also somebody who did not baulk at stealing others’ ideas for his own. Nor could he stop himself unfairly undermining the reputation of others, even when Owen himself was much lauded by the scientific world, prime ministers, and royalty. Mantell experienced that dark side to Owen’s character on many occasions.
Another major character in the book is William Buckland. He was an Oxford academic and a geologist. In the early nineteenth century, the University was steeped in the Anglican tradition. Most of the college lecturers took Holy Orders. Buckland was himself ordained in 1809 and elected as a fellow in the same year. Buckland is emblematic of the problems that scientists faced in reconciling their discoveries about the physical world with The Bible.
For instance, he convinced himself that the six days of creation were in fact six eras that spanned many years. Owen too spent considerable time developing arcane theories with which to reconcile what he saw in the fossil record and what he read in The Bible. Even Darwin held off publishing his discoveries, because of religion. He was tormented by the implications of his ideas and “retreated to a rural life of a semi-invalid”. Owen rubbished Darwin’s theories when they were published. But it was Darwin’s ideas and Owen’s inability to adapt to them that ultimately led to the latter’s downfall, which is where the book ends – fittingly a form of natural selection!
Cadbury has written a number of history books that cover relatively niche topics; “The Chocolate Wars” being one of them – of course it is. But if they are all as good as this one, then I will want to read more. Perhaps I should buy them now and let them sit on my shelf for a bit.