Show Me the Bone ─ Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-century Britain and America

Show Me the Bone is the first book to examine the famous claim of nineteenth-century paleontologists that, from just a single bone, they could identify and sometimes even reconstruct previously unknown prehistoric creatures. “Show me the bone, and I will describe the animal!” Their extraordinary displays of predictive reasoning relied on the law of correlation, which proposed that each element of an animal corresponds mutually with all the others, so that a carnivorous tooth must be accompanied by a particular kind of jawbone, neck, and stomach. This principle was pivotal in the development of the new science of paleontology, and in both Britain and America these paleontological feats became some of the most sensational and widely-reported events of the century. In telling the history of the only fundamental axiom of nineteenth-century science without a dedicated modern study,Show Me the Bone reveals—more fully than ever before—how the practices of elite men of science were shaped by their involvement with the non-scientific public. Anyone concerned with science and religion, popular science, scientific naturalism, and science and literature will profit from reading this book.

Gowan Dawson is professor of Victorian literature and culture at the University of Leicester. He is coeditor ofVictorian Scientific Naturalism, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and is the author ofDarwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability.