Rieppel, Lukas (Author)
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.
...MoreReview Henry M. Cowles (2021) Review of "Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 415-417).
Review Peter J. Bowler (2022) Review of "Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 529-531).
Review Pamela Walker Laird (2021) Review of "Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle". Journal of American History (pp. 1013-1014).
Review Miquel Carandell Baruzzi (2021) Review of "Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle". Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science (p. 100781).
Review Hochadel, Oliver (June 2020) Review of "Dinosaurierfragmente: Zur Geschichte der Tendaguru-Expedition und ihrer Objekte, 1906-2018". NTM: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin.
Article
Lukas Rieppel;
(2015)
Prospecting for Dinosaurs on the Mining Frontier: The Value of Information in America’s Gilded Age
(/isis/citation/CBB570078874/)
Book
Caitlin Donahue Wylie;
(2021)
Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work behind the Scenes
(/isis/citation/CBB218340071/)
Book
Ina Heumann;
Holger Stoecker;
Marco Tamborini;
Mareike Vennen;
(2018)
Dinosaurierfragmente: Zur Geschichte der Tendaguru-Expedition und ihrer Objekte, 1906-2018
(/isis/citation/CBB168836588/)
Article
Elizabeth D. Jones;
(2019)
Assumptions of Authority: The Story of Sue the T-Rex and Controversy Over Access to Fossils
(/isis/citation/CBB334696047/)
Thesis
Marlena Briane Cameron;
(2017)
Fossil Excavation, Museums, and Wyoming: American Paleontology, 1870-1915
(/isis/citation/CBB144188127/)
Article
Jordan D. II Marché;
(2019)
“Giant Birds of Old”: An 1837 poem by James Dwight Dana (?) on the supposed makers of the Connecticut Valley's fossil trackways
(/isis/citation/CBB796867178/)
Thesis
Rieppel, Lukas Benjamin;
(2012)
Dinosaurs: Assembling an Icon of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001567402/)
Book
Dingus, Lowell;
Norell, Mark A.;
(2010)
Barnum Brown: The Man Who Discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex
(/isis/citation/CBB001023269/)
Book
Gabriele Ferrari;
(2023)
Polvere e ossa. Edward Drinker Cope e Othniel Charles Marsh, due paleontologi a caccia di dinosauri nel Far West
(/isis/citation/CBB736999771/)
Book
Gowan Dawson;
(2016)
Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-century Britain and America
(/isis/citation/CBB200052380/)
Book
Donald R. Prothero;
(2018)
The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB293277728/)
Article
Glendening, John;
(2009)
“The World-Renowned Ichthyosaurus”: A Nineteenth-Century Problematic and Its Representations
(/isis/citation/CBB001213333/)
Book
Mayor, Adrienne;
(2011)
The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times
(/isis/citation/CBB001550088/)
Book
Rich, Thomas H. V.;
Rich, Pat Vickers;
(2000)
Dinosaurs of darkness
(/isis/citation/CBB000101955/)
Article
Lukas Rieppel;
(October 2020)
How Dinosaurs Became Tyrants of the Prehistoric
(/isis/citation/CBB930265407/)
Book
Sliggers, Bert;
(2006)
Dino's en Draken: Fossielen in Mythen en Volksgeloof
(/isis/citation/CBB001031845/)
Book
Rich, Thomas H.;
Vickers-Rich, Patricia;
(2003)
A Century of Australian Dinosaurs
(/isis/citation/CBB000950018/)
Article
R. Bruce McMillan;
(2016)
C. W. Beehler's Collection of Vertebrate Fossils: A Lost Legacy
(/isis/citation/CBB008066555/)
Chapter
T. Pointon;
D. M. Martill;
(2013)
Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle's Contribution to the Popularity of Pterodactyls
(/isis/citation/CBB880697902/)
Article
Smith, Kerri;
(2012)
China's Dinosaur Hunter: The Ground Breaker
(/isis/citation/CBB001320439/)
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