I’ll be honest, up until a visit to The American Museum of Natural History in late 2015 I didn’t realize that it’s been less than 200 years since people knew there were dinosaurs. It hadn’t ever occurred to me that paleontology could be such a young science, or that many species of mega fauna were discovered first, but that seems to be the case. Honestly, I’d been laboring under the impression that the “dragons” people talked about for centuries were inspired by early dinosaur bone discoveries…
So are there any novels that talk about the early realizations that our planet was once inhabited by these massive creatures? It must’ve seemed quite fantastically, especially to non-scientists. I’d love to read stories not only about paleontologists from the early days, but ones that also touch on what the common people thought about such revelations.
Suggestions of relevant YA or children’s books are as welcome as novels meant for adults, by the way.
I think that’s still likely to be the case. Many dinosaur bones are found almost at surface level, in caves, mines, or quarries, which have been in operation for centuries longer than formalised palaeontology.
I haven’t read it but Michael Crichton’s Dragon Teeth sounds like something you’d be interested in. From Amazon:
"Michael Crichton, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Jurassic Park, returns to the world of paleontology in this recently discovered novel—a thrilling adventure set in the Wild West during the golden age of fossil hunting.
The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America’s western territories even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. In much of the country it is still illegal to espouse evolution. Against this backdrop two monomaniacal paleontologists pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars."
In their exploration of the American West, Lewis and Clark were instructed to keep an eye out for exotic beasts, based on fossil findings. Thomas Jefferson believed such animals might still exist in the continent’s wild interior.
You’d think they’d still be around, though. Someone pulls a giant, stone dragon skull out of a salt mine in Bohemia, you’d expect the local lord to snap it up and put it in a vault. You’d think a genuine “dragon” skull would end up on a velvet cushion next to the crown jewels, but this wikipedia article doesn’t mention anything other than modern-ish shellfish and bamboo until around the 17th century.
I don’t believe Jefferson thought there still might be dinosaurs wandering the Great Plains. He was probably referring to mammoths, mastodons, and ground sloths.
Dragon’s Teeth is a decent summer beach/airplane novel, fast-paced but not deep in any way. It does give the reader a pretty good feel for the skullduggery afoot during the Bone Wars.
Thank you for this. I always wondered, had to figure that much like the world being round, it must have been something a lot of people knew before it was studied in a systematic way. It’s hard for me to imagine that 200 years ago people were like, “OMG! There used to be dinosaurs! We had no idea!”
Maybe too obvious, but Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth was published in 1864. I haven’t read it, but the movie had lots of dinosaurs, so I would guess you could gather some popular ideas about prehistoric creatures from it.
I have read E.R.Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot, and it definitely had dinosaurs, but it was written a bit past your cutoff (1918).
She also wrote a follow-up, Fossil Legends of the First Americans (2005) about American Indian legends inspired by fossils.
Just so’s you know – these suggestions weren’t original with her* – you can read lots of speculation about the role of fossils in shaping myths, legends and folklore before her. Have a look at Willy Ley’s books, like Willy Ley’s Exotic Zoology. One of the most surprising things is to learn that most legends of dragons and the lie were NOT inspired by dinosaur fossils. In cases where we have or can identify the likely sources, the fossils were of much later mammal megafauna, like mammoths, wooly rhinoceros, and the like. Willy Ley makes a compelling case for the Babylonian sirrush being inspired by dinosaurs, however, with its notably bird-like clawed feet. L. Sprague de Camp took this idea and ran with it in his historical novel The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate*, which sorta qualifies for the OP’s query about books about fossils, myths, and their inspiration, if over 2000 years earlier.
*Mayor is, however, as far as I know, the one who came up with the suggestion that the legends of Griffens/Gryphons were inspired by fossil ceratopsians like Psitticasaurus and Protoceratops. I’ve met and talked with Ms. Mayor, because a.) we’ve both written books on scientific inspirations of Greek myths and b.) one of her homes is a block from the park where my wife used to play as a kid.
IIRC in he Mayor book there are stories of bones dug up that were thought to be the remains of figures from myths and legends and reburied with honor, or kept in temples and carried away as spoils of war.
Also, for a long time in Europe, at least, fossils were thought to be natural occurances that grew in the ground, like crystals. Ant their shape was a clue from God what they should be ground up and eaten to treat.