The Dinosaur Papers: 1676-1906 edited by David B. Weishampel and Nadine M. White, Smithsonian, $75/£57, ISBN 1588341224 Reviewed by Douglas Palmer
HERE’S a book for serious dinosaur buffs, a selection from the classic papers – several translated from French and German – that helped to bring the beasts out of the fossil closet and into the limelight. Beginning with Robert Plot’s famous 1676 misdiagnosis of a broken dinosaur thigh bone as a human one, we are taken on a fascinating trip down memory lane to the first recognition and naming of the best beast of all Tyrannosaurus rex by Henry Fairfield Osborn between 1905 and…
