Review of DINOSAURS AT THE DINNER PARTY
Imagine finding a dinosaur bone before anyone knew what they were
Tl;dr – A delightful narrative history of the discovering of dinosaurs and the upending of human knowledge about how the world was – and had been.
Dinosaurs are so ubiquitous in modern life. Obviously, they are not alive, but we have entire theme parks, movies, and toys dedicated to the group of prehistoric animals. You can make and entire career out of studying these creatures. You can go to museums and see their bones and stand in awe of their size.
But not all that long ago everyone on earth existed without the concept of dinosaurs in their brains. Because no one knew that they had once existed. Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World by Edward Dolnick tells the story of how people first learned of dinosaurs and the challenges to orthodox thought such revelations brought to society in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The early nineteenth century brought about a wave of dinosaur fossil discoveries, puzzling those who uncovered these gigantic bones that belonged to no known living creature. In 1802 a farmer boy in Massachusetts uncovered monstrous fossilized footprints. The first dinosaur tracks ever discovered. It took another forty years before the word “dinosaur” even entered the cultural dictionary. Before this time period, it was conventional and accepted thought that the world simply existed as it always had. A world carefully crafted by God himself.
The book follows a few main characters that played a pivotal role in putting dinosaurs center stage during this time including, Mary Anning who doesn’t get enough credit for her work in fossil discovery (is anyone surprised?), William Buckland, and Richard Owen (who coined the term “dinosaur”).
Remember, this is all taking place during the time of Darwin, Wallace, and the development of our modern theory of evolution. Scientists (a word that didn’t exist until 1834) were making discoveries, including those of dinosaurs, suggesting that the earth was old; suggesting that animals change over time; suggesting that religion was completely wrong about earth’s history (and our own).
Oh, to be alive in the nineteenth century to witness the upheaval of earth’s history. To be a guest at these dinner parties that displayed such wild, novel, monstrous bones as a backdrop to conversation. Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party is a fantastic, easy to read book and one of my favorites of this past year.
Published: August 2024
Publisher: Scribner
Format: Hardcover
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life (2019) by David Quammen
On The Origin of Evolution: Tracing ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ from Aristotle to DNA (2022) by John Gibbin and Mary Gibbin | Read my review
That sounds fascinating—good pick!