Manias, C. (Ed).
(2025)
Palaeontology in Public: Popular science, lost creatures and deep time.
[Book].
UCL Press: London.
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Abstract
Since the establishment of concepts of deep time in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, palaeontology has been one of the most high-profile sciences. Dinosaurs, mammoths, human ancestors and other lost creatures from Earth’s history are some of the most prominent icons of science, and are essential for our understanding of nature and time. Palaeontology and its practitioners have had a huge impact on public understandings of science, despite their often precarious and unsteady position within scientific institutions and networks. Palaeontology in Public considers the connections between palaeontology and public culture across the past two centuries. In so doing, it explores how these public dimensions have been crucial to the development of palaeontology, and indeed how they conditioned wider views of science, nature, the environment, time and the world. The book provides a history of vertebrate palaeontology through a series of compelling case studies. Dinosaurs feature, of course, including Spinosaurus, Winsor McCay’s ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ and the creatures of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. But there are also the small mammals of the Mesozoic, South American Glyptodons, and human ancestors like Neanderthals and Australopithecines. This book shows how palaeontology is defined by its relationship with public audiences and how this connection is central to our vision of the past and future of the Earth and its inhabitants.
| Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Title: | Palaeontology in Public: Popular science, lost creatures and deep time |
| ISBN-13: | 978-1-80008-582-4 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.9781800085824 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800085824 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Collection © Editor, 2025 Text © Contributors, 2025 Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in captions, 2025 Any third-party material in this book is not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence. Details of the copyright ownership and permitted use of third-party material is given in the image (or extract) credit lines. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright owner. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. Attribution should include the following information: Manias, C. (ed). 2025. Palaeontology in Public: Popular science, lost creatures and deep time. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800085824 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |
| Keywords: | Evolution, literature, media, popular science, human origins, dinosaurs, fossils, palaeontology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10203478 |
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