04698cam a2200409 i 4500 1842519344 TxAuBib 20241231120000.0 240329s2024||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2024003627 9781982199616 hardcover 198219961X hardcover 40032420849 (OCoLC)1405189850 TxAuBib rda Dolnick, Edward, 1952-, author. Dinosaurs at the dinner party : how an eccentric group of Victorians discovered prehistoric creatures and accidentally upended the world / Edward Dolnick. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York, NY : Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC, 2024. ©2024. xiii, 336 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier sti rdacontent rdamedia rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references and index. Introduction: A shriek in the night -- "Dragons in their slime" -- The girl who lived -- "The most amazing creature" -- An epic written in chalk -- "The dreadful clink of hammers" -- "It's a beautiful day and the beaches are open" -- Trembling in the dark -- The divine calligrapher -- The apple of God's eye -- Whales in the treetops -- Without a trace -- "None of the advantages" -- "Sister of the above" -- Ferns and fox hunters -- Into the temple of immortality -- Framed for bliss -- "A delicate toast of mice" -- Kirkdale Cave -- In nature's cathedral -- "Quite in love with seaweeds" -- William Paley stubs his toe -- Here be dragons (and giants and cyclopses) -- Looking into Medusa's eyes -- Leibniz's unicorn -- "The grinders of an elephant" -- "The terror of the forest" -- "The very extraordinary SKELETON" -- Noah's ark -- "A cold wind out of a dark cellar" -- Sherlock Holmes ponders a bone -- Bursting the limits of time -- Boiling seas and exploding mountains -- Mayflies and human history -- Scattered by desert winds -- Lizards in scripture? -- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde -- Defunct animals and open windows -- The mystery of the moa -- "The invention of dinosaurs" -- "When troubles come, they come not single spies but in battalions" -- Return of the happy world -- Dinner in a dinosaur -- "It is like confessing a murder" -- Epilogue. "In the early 1800s the world was a safe and cozy place. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates-the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, Victorians unearthed enormous bones--bones that reached as high as a man's head. No one had ever seen such things. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land. And if anyone had somehow conjured up such a scene, they would never have imagined that all those animals could have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago. The thought of sudden, arbitrary disappearance from life was unnerving and forced the Victorians to rethink everything they knew about the world. Now, in Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland, a kind of Doctor Doolittle on a mission to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom; and then on to Richard Owen, the most respected and the most despised scientist of his generation. Entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanity's understanding of the world and their place in it, and how a group of paleontologists worked to bring it back into focus again"-- Provided by publisher. 20241231. cat Ensign College 20240923 cjk. Paleontology Great Britain History 19th century. Paleontologists Great Britain History 19th century. Dinosaurs Great Britain History. TXKIP