Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle

by Lukas Rieppel

A lively account of how dinosaurs became a symbol of American power and prosperity and gripped the popular imagination during the Gilded Age, when their fossil remains were collected and displayed in museums financed by North America’s wealthiest business tycoons.

Although dinosaur fossils were first found in England, a series of dramatic discoveries during the late 1800s turned North America into a world center for vertebrate paleontology. At the same time, the United States emerged as the world’s largest industrial economy, and creatures like Tyrannosaurus , Brontosaurus , and Triceratops became emblems of American capitalism. Large, fierce, and spectacular, American dinosaurs dominated the popular imagination, making front-page headlines and appearing in feature films.

Assembling the Dinosaur follows dinosaur fossils from the field to the museum and into the commercial culture of North America’s Gilded Age. Business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan made common cause with vertebrate paleontologists to capitalize on the widespread appeal of dinosaurs, using them to project American exceptionalism back into prehistory. Learning from the show-stopping techniques of P. T. Barnum, museums exhibited dinosaurs to attract, entertain, and educate the public. By assembling the skeletons of dinosaurs into eye-catching displays, wealthy industrialists sought to cement their own reputations as generous benefactors of science, showing that modern capitalism could produce public goods in addition to profits. Behind the scenes, museums adopted corporate management practices to control the movement of dinosaur bones, restricting their circulation to influence their meaning and value in popular culture.

Tracing the entwined relationship of dinosaurs, capitalism, and culture during the Gilded Age, Lukas Rieppel reveals the outsized role these giant reptiles played during one of the most consequential periods in American history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Dinosaurs, Audiobook, Palaeontology, Natural History

336 pages, Hardcover

Published June 24, 2019

About the author

Lukas Rieppel is the David and Michelle Ebersman Assistant Professor of History at Brown University.

Reviews

[Felicia Weiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly brilliant! A must-read for anyone interested in pondering the variety of ways in which history is reconstructed, not just via dinosaur fossils (or, in some spectacular assemblages, pseud0-fossils) but via any artifact of one's own choosing.

My one caveat is the absence of a true Bibliography. (The Notes section is fantastic -- hundreds of superb references. But it's a tough slog to have to keep going through the 55 pages of Notes to locate the particular books, articles, manuscript collections, et al. the reader is interested in perusing firsthand at a later date. I'm compiling my own Bibliography from the Notes. You might wish to do the same.)

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lukas Rieppel gives an overtly scholarly (if occasionally redundant) presentation of how the dinosaurs entered “modern” culture, and the relationship between those who find and dig up the fossils with those who “study” them and those who pay for all of it in the name of philanthropy, and what these philanthropist expected in return. He largely skips over (with an occasional anecdote or two) the role the behemoths played in various classical cultures, as well as the evolution of the beasts themselves into the various families to which they are now associated.

He is concerned with the modern origins (rediscovery and naming) from Victorian England, to what he terms the ‘golden age’ in America from shortly after the civil War until the onset of the great depression, with a final chapter concerning the “dinosaur renaissance” of the 1980’s and 90’s when sluggish solitary brutes were reimagined as agile social animals to the eventual usurpation of the Chinese as the dominant leaders in paleontology with the vast Asian fossil finds that firmly established today’s birds as both members as well as the descendants of the dinosaurs.

The relationship between dinosaurs as pure entertainment versus a means to educate the masses is explored in depth.

With their popularity, dinosaurs even became a medium for national expression, from the national museums themselves to the competition for acquisitions. Rieppel is fascinated with every socio-political implication at every step of the process as well as how modern science, as it relates to dinosaurs, has evolved by leaps and bounds from its primitive 19th century beginnings. When it suited those who sponsored the digs financially to be seen as the crown of creation, dinosaurs were sluggish monsters whose insufficiencies lead to their destruction. When international cooperation is being peddled, suddenly dinosaurs are familial creatures, who tend their young and hunt together. Maybe. Maybe not. A bit of the chicken and the egg quandary.

Replete with 56 pages of fine print footnotes, black and white photographs, and many a tale involving the sundry characters who populate the story, ASSEMBLING THE DINOSAUR is a fascinating read.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A neat look at the results of finding dinosaur fossils made on the world and the way the world affected the search for more.

[Zen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting read. It doesn't necessarily talk about dinosaurs, specificly, per se, but more about how they have been integrated into modern society. It explains how their extraction was facilitated by capitalism mostly. It also provides the map to show how these creatures that none of us have ever seen have permeated out everyday life.

[Susan (the other Susan) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Believe the liner notes, and don’t go into this expecting something that’s not on offer. Probably fascinating for plenty of people, but I didn’t finish it.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited about this book but I could not finish it. I suspect this book started out as a masters or doctoral thesis about the economics of the dinosaur fossil hunters, thus I was happy to tolerate a bit of stuff about capitalism's help in creation of a market for fossils and the way they were tied into the exploration for oil (which is interesting) but the author was determined to hammer this tiresome point again and again: capitalism, oil, fossils, colonisation of the land - I get it okay! - and I'm interested in those things but what I was really interested in was the hunt for dinosaur bones. The editor should have thrown it back and told the writer to take out all the second-rate academic blather, would have been a much better book. Sadly did not finish, but might return to it.

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this deep dive into the relationship between philanthropy and the great natural history museums to be quite interesting, but it's probably going to be more relevant to those interested in the sociology of the "Long Gilded Age" than those just interested in dinosaurs. Though it is interesting to see how the museums tried to achieve a balance between uplifting education, expanding knowledge, and engaging in a bit of showmanship. Rieppel does occasionally go off the tracks, as when he veers into a discussion of what the scientific theory of the early 20th century had to say to people concerned about gender roles, eugenics, and the like. The end chapter might be called a dive into how some things don't change, as it deals with how the Chinese are now trying to make social capital in paleozoology, as they are arguably the leaders in finding new and relevant fossils.

[Jim Gulley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extinct dinosaurs are forever memorialized in natural history museums in the U.S. and across the world. Rieppel unpacks the history of how these museums were established during the “Long Gilded Age” in America. Beginning with the first major discovery of fossil deposits in a Wyoming quarry in 1877, he traces the symbiotic, yet chaotic, dance between paleontologists and philanthropists that resulted in institutions like the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Field Museum in Chicago, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The book also makes connections with cultural movements during this period like progressivism, social Darwinism, and the Industrial Revolution to illustrate how dinosaur science and their curation both impacted these cultural forces and were impacted by them as well.

Accessibility Spectrum rating: 7

[Dolores of Course · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you going into this knowing that there is very little discussion about dinosaurs and paleontology, you will enjoy it more. This book is about how the rich of the Gilded Age shaped shaped museums and scientific institutions. Dinosaur bones are the currency of this book. The history of the dinosaur fossil trade and how it drove the creation of museums specifically for their display and public admiration is very interesting, but what I thought I was getting when I started this. The main dinosaur discussions are at the beginning and at the end. In the last chapter, there's an interesting discussion about how China has become the new fossil hotbed and some of the very cool discoveries that have been made there.

[Laura Madsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book deals not with dinosaurs in the "living and breathing animals who died off 66 million years ago" sense but with dinosaurs in the "fossils being excavated, sold, mounted, interpreted, and displayed" sense. Interesting correlations with Gilded Age history and the rise of both capitalism and the grand old philanthropic museums like AMNH and the Field. Mostly this book would be of interest to those in history, economics, or museum studies. I found chapters 2 (Tea with Brontosaurus), 3 (Andrew Carnegie's Diplodocus) and 6 (Bringing Dinosaurs Back to Life) most interesting from a museum studies perspective.

[Toofan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audio-book: Audio quality: excellent, narration: excellent
The presented information in this book although interesting is very basic and the writing style is rather dry.
This book covers :
A very shallow history of discovery of dinosaur fossils in North America and the reactions of scientists and opportunist business men to this found.
A very basic biography of Andrew Carnegie and his approach to dinosaurs.
A brief look at dinosaurs' role in American entertainment industry.
Some shallow information about dinosaur remains found in china.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assembling the Dinosaur was an interesting dive into a part of dinosaurs that I hadn't ever considered before: their economic and sociopolitical significance, especially during the Gilded Age and early 20th century, and how that shaped how fossils were viewed, treated, and used. The material and writing was a bit dry, but topic itself was great and I finished the book feeling like I'd learned (or, at least, needed to reconsider) a lot. This is a book that I'm happy to have stumbled across while browsing.

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Audiobook) Solid if not spectacular overview of the history of paleontology in the US. It is not a complete history, but rather looks at the evolution of our study dinosaurs since the Gilded Age. Dinosaurs are used and impacted things from philanthropy to evolution/eugenics to modern cinema. Perhaps more could be written about the history, but still, there were some engaging spots here. A decent listen, but not worth a purchase.

[Steve Wilner]

If zero stars was a rating that indicated I had read it and not forgotten to rate it I would have given this book zero stars. This book is all over the place, poorly written and simply not that interesting. Wow, just a really bad miss. Oh, I guess I did give it zero stars. Save your time and money.

[The Inquisitive Biologist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assembling the Dinosaur provides a scholarly and broad historical perspective on palaeontology in 19th Century American museums, and how it was entangled with the rise of corporate capitalism during this time. See my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2019...

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting for anyone involved in museums, or academic pursuits that overlap with entertainment.
This book explores the (frequently uncomfortable) space between funding and intellectual pursuits.

[Yosef Shapiro · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like parts of this book. The parts the focus on the search for and reconstruction of the dinosaurs. But, I do not like the political editorializing as to the significance of dinosaurs and what they symbolize for America and Americans. My rating is 2.5 stars.

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good workman like history showing the way that the Gilded Age impacted the history of paleontology in the US. It reads like an academic historian, which it is.

[Mills College Library]

560.75 R558 2019

[Kathryn Ovenden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dinosaurssssssss

[Alexis Kaelin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was great - an unexpected find more about museum and information history than dinosaurs. What a treat!

[Trike · Rating 3 out of 5]

All these books that have the same date for the summer of ‘22 are because I was locked out of Goodreads and didn’t note the day I read the books.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a history class and the points he makes comes across but it is such a slog to get through. I am so glad I'm done with it.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're looking for a book about hunting for dinosaur fossils, this isn't the book you want. But if you're at all interested in the political, economic, and societal implications of dinosaur fossils in the "Long" Gilded Age then I highly recommend this!

I thought the audiobook narration was excellent and the writing interesting while not being overly academic.

In my opinion, some highlights were the discussion about the English and German responses to receiving US fossils for their museums and the discussion about modern finds/research in China.

[Michelle Bizzell · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know I can't resist a dinosaur book. Particularly I can't resist a discussion of the intersection of paleontology and social history. Instead of the typical story of digging up bones, this focused more on who was funding paleontology expeditions and how their findings were being displayed.