Book ID: CBB218340071

Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work behind the Scenes (2021)

unapi

Wylie, Caitlin Donahue (Author)


MIT Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 264
Language: English

Those awe-inspiring dinosaur skeletons on display in museums do not spring fully assembled from the earth. Technicians known as preparators have painstakingly removed the fossils from rock, repaired broken bones, and reconstructed missing pieces to create them. These specimens are foundational evidence for paleontologists, and yet the work and workers in fossil preparation labs go largely unacknowledged in publications and specimen records. In this book, Caitlin Wylie investigates the skilled labor of fossil preparators and argues for a new model of science that includes all research work and workers. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, Wylie shows that the everyday work of fossil preparation requires creativity, problem-solving, and craft. She finds that preparators privilege their own skills over technology and that scientists prefer to rely on these trusted technicians rather than new technologies. Wylie examines how fossil preparators decide what fossils, and therefore dinosaurs, look like; how labor relations between interdependent yet hierarchically unequal collaborators influence scientific practice; how some museums display preparators at work behind glass, as if they were another exhibit; and how these workers learn their skills without formal training or scientific credentials. The work of preparing specimens is a crucial component of scientific research, although it leaves few written traces. Wylie argues that the paleontology research community's social structure demonstrates how other sciences might incorporate non-scientists into research work, empowering and educating both scientists and nonscientists.

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Reviewed By

Review Max Dresow (2023) Review of "Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work behind the Scenes". Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 181-184). unapi

Review Irina Podgorny (2023) Review of "Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work behind the Scenes". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 215-216). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB218340071/

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Authors & Contributors
Wylie, Caitlin Donahue
Rieppel, Lukas
Rich, Thomas H. V.
Cameron, Marlena Briane
Fallon, Richard
Jones, Elizabeth D.
Concepts
Fossils
Paleontology
Dinosaurs
Natural history
Museums
Science and literature
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
20th century, late
Gilded Age (1870s-1900)
Places
United States
Australia
Wyoming (U.S.)
Mediterranean region
Tanzania (Tanganyika, Zanzibar)
Spain
Institutions
University of Wyoming
Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin)
Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (Spain)
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