2024/046: The First Fossil Hunters — Adrienne Mayor

2024/046: The First Fossil Hunters — Adrienne Mayor

Something real must have continued to confirm the most remarkable features about griffins: They had four legs but also a beak; they were found in deserts near gold. What kind of physical evidence might have verified their existence for so many people over so many centuries? [p. 34]

Adrienne Mayor, 'a historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist', uses her knowledge of classical literature and of paleontology to argue that the ancient Greeks interpreted fossils that weathered out of the ground as the bones of heroes, giants and monsters. ( Read more... )