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The First Fossil Hunters-- Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times THE FIRST FOSSIL HUNTERS PALEONTOLOGY IN GREEK AND ROMAN TIMES Adrienne Mayor PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright © 2000 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved Seventh printing, and first paperback printing, 2001 Paperback ISBN 0-691-08977-9 The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows Mayor, Adrienne, 1946- The first fossil hunters : paleontology in Greek and Roman times / Adrienne Mayor, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-05863-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Paleontology—Greece—History. 2. Paleontology—Rome—History. 3. Science, Ancient. I. Title. QE705.G8M39 2000 560'938—dc21 99-43073 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Galliard Typeface Printed on acid-free paper. °° www.pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 7 9 11 13 15 14 12 10 8 For my parents BARBARA AND JOHN MAYOR CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix Foreword: Stones, Bones, and Exotic Creatures of the Past by Peter Dodson xiii Acknowledgments xix Geological Time Scale 2 Introduction 3 Historical Time Line 11 CHAPTER 1. The Gold-Guarding Griffin: A Paleontological Legend 15 CHAPTER 2. Earthquakes and Elephants: Prehistoric Remains in Mediterranean Lands 54 CHAPTER 3. Ancient Discoveries of Giant Bones 104 CHAPTER 4. Artistic and Archaeological Evidence for Fossil Discoveries 157 CHAPTER 5. Mythology, Natural Philosophy, and Fossils 192 CHAPTER 6. Centaur Bones: Paleontological Fictions 228 viii CONTENTS APPENDIX 1. Large Vertebrate Fossil Species in the Ancient World 255 APPENDIX 2. Ancient Testimonia 260 Notes 283 Works Cited 333 Index 351 I L L U $ T RAT IONS MAPS 1.1 Trade routes between the Mediterranean and Asia 24 1.2 Issedonian territory, gold deposits and dinosaur exposures 28 2.1 Greece, the Aegean, and Anatolia 59 2.2 The ancient Greco-Roman world 62 3.1 Giant bones observed around the Aegean in antiquity 114 3.2 Giant bones observed around the Mediterranean in antiquity 127 3.3 Giant bones observed in Asia in antiquity 136 FIGURES 1.1. Typical griffin on a classical Greek vase painting 17 1.2. Fossil Samotherium skull (giant Miocene giraffe) 19 1.3. Fossil display, Paleontological Museum, Samos, Greece 20 1.4. Scythian tattoos, fifth century B.C. 25 1.5. Griffin nursing its young, Greek bronze, ca. 630 B.C. 27 1.6. Nomad fighting griffin in desert, classical Greek vase 31 1:7. Griffin in trap, Roman mosiac, Piazza Armerina, Sicily 34 1.8. Statue of dragon modeled on fossil rhinoceros skull, Klagenfurt, Austria 35 1.9. Classical Cyclops statue and elephant skull 36 1.10. Protoceratops skeleton 41 1.11. Protoceratops skull 41 \ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1.12. Dinosaur eggs 42 1.13. Artist's conception of the Scythians' restoration of Protoceratops skeleton as a griffin 44 1.14. Gold griffin head (ca. 600 B.C.) and Psittacosaurus skull 49 2.1. Mastodon fossil exposure, Greece 56 2.2. Mastodon fossil exposure with human scale, Greece 57 2.3. Pleistocene elephant skeleton in the ground, Greece 68 2.4. Pleistocene elephant skeleton in the ground, Greece 68 2.5. Pleistocene elephant skeleton in the ground, Greece 69 2.6. Fossil tusks of a mastodon, Greece 70 2.7. Woman standing next to the fossil femur of a Pleistocene elephant 78 2.8. Human femur compared to Pleistocene elephant femur 79 2.9. Human femur compared to Pleistocene elephant femur 80 2.10. Woman and mammoth skeleton 81 2.11. Extinct mammoth skeleton arranged in the form of a bipedal giant 82 2.12. Neogene fossil beds, Pikermi, Greece, cross-section 84 2.13. Excavations at Pikermi fossil beds, Greece, ca. 1900 86 2.14. Block of jumbled fossil bones, Pikermi, Greece 87 2.15. Skull of giant Miocene hyena, Greece 88 2.16. Miocene mastodon skull and teeth, Greece 88 2.17. Helladotherium (Miocene giraffe) skeleton, Pikermi, Greece 89 2.18. Helladotherium (Miocene giraffe) skull, Pikermi, Greece 89 2.19. Miocene-Pleistocene Deinotheriumgiganteum skull 90 2.20. Samotherium femur (giant Miocene giraffe), Samos, Greece 92 2.21. Fossil rhinoceros jaw and teeth, Samos, Greece 94 2.22. Excavation of Neogene bone beds, Samos, Greece, 1923-24 96 2.23. Barnum Brown excavating fossils, Samos, Greece, 1923-24 97 2.24. Theodore Skoufos excavating fossil elephant tusk and skull, Megalopolis, Greece, 1902 98 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi 2.25. Mastodon tusks, Macedonia, Greece 100 2.26. Mammoth skeleton 102 3.1. Mammoth scapula 107 3.2. Mammoth and human scapulas compared 108 3.3. Ancient Greek fisherman netting a giant shoulder blade 109 3.4. Models of mammoth and human skeletons 122 3.5. Bipedal mammoth monster and human skeleton 123 3.6. Miocene rhinoceros skeleton 124 3.7. Miocene rhinoceros skull 125 3.8. Giant Miocene crocodile skull, Siwalik Hills, Pakistan 132 3.9. Sivatherium skull, Siwalik Hills, Pakistan 133 3.10. Sivatherium skull, Siwalik Hills, Pakistan 134 3.11. Giraffokeryx skull, Siwalik Hills, Pakistan 134 3.12. Mammoth, human, and mastodon teeth, relative sizes 147 3.13. Fossil exposure in Egyptian desert 151 3.14. Mastodon skeleton (Gomphotherium anjjustidens) 152 4.1. Monster of Troy vase, Greece, sixth century B.C., showing the discovery of a large fossil animal skull 158 4.2. Monster of Troy vase, detail of the monstrous fossil skull 160 4.3. Samotherium skull (giant Miocene giraffe) 161 4.4. Monster of Joppa vase painting, sixth-century B.C. Greece 163 4.5. Giant dragged from a cave, classical Greek vase painting 164 4.6. Mammoth molars discovered on Capri, Italy 173 4.7. Pleistocene rhinoceros jaw and molars, Capri, Italy 174 4.8. Pleistocene cave bear jaw and teeth, Capri, Italy 174 4.9. Cave bear skeleton 176 4.10. Linen-wrapped fossil bones from ancient Set shrine, Qau, Egypt 179 4.11. Large fossil femur displayed in the Temple of Hera, Samos, Greece, in the seventh century B.C. 184 4.12. Large fossil femur collected in antiquity and placed on the acropolis at Nichoria, Greece 188 4.13. Woolly rhinoceros skeleton 189 5.1. Ancient Greek standing next to a mammoth femur 200 5.2. Philosopher contemplating a giant bone 212 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 6.1. Tritons on a terracotta figure from Tanagra, Greece, sixth century B.C. 229 6.2. Fake Tritons 234 6.3. Reconstructions of ancient Greek Satyr masks 238 6.4. Satyr mask reconstructed from classical Greek vase painting 238 6.5. The Centaur Excavation at Volos display 242 6.6. Centaur skeleton 242 6.7. Hypothetical skull of the human-dinosaur hybrid 250 6.8. Model of the Dinosauroid Hominid 251 FOREWOR D Stones, Bones, and Exotic Creatures of the Past PETER DODSON University of Pennsylvania S A CHILD, I was powerfully drawn to stones and bones. By age eleven I told my parents I wanted to be a paleontologist. Pursuing my dream of becoming a paleontologist, I studied geology in college. Here I learned rocks, I learned minerals, I learned invertebrate fossils. My head was stuffed with facts. Later in graduate school I learned vertebrate fossils, and I learned bones, and anatomy, and evolutionary theory. I handled bones, and my wish to study fossils themselves became a reality. It has been a joy and a delight to pursue my career. But there was something missing: a historical perspective. History mat­ ters. What is almost as important as what we learn is how we have come to know. Paleontology is a historical science. Even though knowledge is advancing rapidly today (far more rapidly than when I was a graduate student), there is a component of paleontology that does not change and that can never be outdated: that is, the descriptions of the fossils themselves. In bygone days, descriptions and illustrations were often quite elegant. The old monographs from the early days of the twentieth century or even the nine­ teenth century must still be consulted. Rarely does the elegance of descriptive work today match that of former times. Remember how Darwin spent eight years producing his monographs on bar­ nacles! The world moves too fast today even to permit considera­ tion of such a project. Darwin would never have gotten tenure at a modern university! What I have gained from reading nineteenth- century works in paleontology is enormous respect for the intellec- xiv PETER DODSON tual giants of the past, the founders of the field of paleontology. I have also found that there is little new under the sun—many ideas about dinosaur biology that have been claimed as new in the 1970s or even today were widely discussed before the advent of the twentieth century! In my training, nobody pointed out to me that history is impor­ tant. I was at a bit of a disadvantage in not having the benefit of a liberal education. I attended a Canadian university at which I stud­ ied geology and other sciences, but little else, least of all history. I remember encountering during my graduate studies at Yale a book by M.J.S. Rudwick, entitled The Meaning of Fossils (1972). I excit­ edly opened it, but quickly closed it again as I discovered that it was not at all about fossils, but only about the history of under­ standing of fossils. So intent was I then on learning about the fossils that I was too focused to consider anything else. I often think that my real education began only after my formal training was completed and I no longer had to take courses or write a thesis.
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