Title:

Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party

Author:

Edward Dolnick

Category:

Non Fiction

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

November 21, 2024

dward Dolnick has written a number of excellent non-fiction books. Mostly recently, I was impressed by his Writing of the Gods, which described the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. I was not aware that Dolnick had written anything new, so it was a pleasant surprise to see Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party on the library shelf of new books. Of course, I grabbed it immediately!

Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party starts at the beginning of the 19th century. Western civilization basks in the knowledge that God has designed a perfect world that is ideal for human existence, and that we hold the supreme place in the kingdom - for after all, are we not created in His image? Then, in 1802, in New England, a twelve year old boy named Pliny Moody drove a plough across a field and unearthed 12 fossilized footprints at large as dinner plates, each print showed three toes, each with a long claw. What creature could have made them? At the time, no one ever thought a species could go extinct. The world was 6000 years old, everything was here according to God's plan. Why would God design animals that then died out? How would the concept of extinction fit with the idea of a divine perfect plan?

In 1811, at the English seaside village of Lyme Regis, an impoverished 12 year old Mary Anning and her 14 year old brother discovered an astonishing skeleton in the eroding cliffs along the shore. The skull alone was four feet long, the jaw lined with hundreds of sharp teeth. This creature is now known to be an ichthyosaurus, but back then no one had seen anything like it. The scientists examined the strange bones (and neglected to give Mary credit in their writeups). Anning spent her life exploring the dangerous cliffs, earning a living by selling fossils, and discovering more strange bones that didn't match any known animal. In 1823, Anning made another major find - a complete skeleton of a monstrous plesiosaur. Scholars pondered these finds - how was it possible that such a creature existed, and how did the bones of these sea creatures become entombed in rock?

Dolnick takes the reader through the evolving thought processes of Europe's best scientists (they were called natural philosophers until the word scientist was invented in 1833). How could so many creatures have fit on Noah's Ark? Why aren't the fossilized remains evenly distributed through the rock layer - it appears as if some species lived during certain ages only to vanish in later eras and be replaced by other creatures. But how could a new species come into existence? The reader is introduced to the great thinkers of the times: Richard Owen, Count Buffon, Georges Cuvier, William Buckland. and Robert Hooke. Dolnick describes what they contributed to the evolving science, and what they got wrong. Many of them were theologians, it was thought that the study of nature would reveal more of God's divine plan. Dolnick also revealed some of their truly "eccentric" behaviors. The title of the book is in regards to a celebratory feast held on New Year's Eve in 1853. Twenty-two of Britain's most prominent scientists, editors and other esteemed gentleman sat at a dinner table that was inside a cutaway model of a life size iguanodon. Owen had shown that dinosaurs were actually advanced creatures, not primitive prototypes, and he reasoned that this proved that new talk of evolution was false. Creatures were not constantly growing into higher lifeforms, dinosaurs were as advanced as our modern species. Owen's theory was deemed a success until 1859, when another Victorian published Origin of the Species, in which Darwin showed how changing environments led to changing animals, until there were entirely new species to replace those that perished.

Thomas Jefferson was an avid "natural philosopher", and was intrigued by the bones of giant elephants that had been unearthed all over the country. During his presidency, the East Room of the White House was filled with mastodon bones. When Lewis and Clark set forth on their epic quest to the Pacific Ocean, Jefferson instructed them to look for the giant elephants that he believed must roam the continent still.

This is not dry reading. Dolnick does an excellent job of describing the discoveries and how they challenged the current beliefs of the time (of course, a significant percentage of our population still believes that the Earth is a mere 6000 years old and that evolution is "just a theory"). Dolnick also includes interesting factoids that researchers uncover, such as: 19th century Victorians were avid collectors of natural objects, such as beetles, ferns, plants and fossils. There was high demand for beautiful sea shells. In 1833, an enterprising family named the Samuels began collecting and selling sea shells. As their company grew, they expanded to importing shells from as far away as China and Japan. They named their enterprise the Shell Transport and Trading Company. Over the decades, this company expanded into other areas, and still exists today, though now it goes by the name of Shell Oil.

I think Dolnick has a few more books that I have not read, I should check to see the library shelves to see what else is available.