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John Lee

IN 1812 in the southern English coastal town of Lyme Regis, Mary Anning, the impoverished daughter of a carpenter, risked the caprices of an unpredictable tide, to reach a cliff face, chip away at unyielding rock and change the world forever.

She found the entire skeleton of an unknown monster that baffled scientists but would eventually lead to an understanding of a lost prehistoric age.

Deborah Cadbury could have called her book Dinosaur Wars, for her riveting account of the founding fathers of palaeontology is a tale of subterfuge, back-stabbing and character assassination on a Machiavellian scale.

At stake was one of the core beliefs of most 19th-century Christians - that life on earth had been created just as it was described in the Bible.

William Buckland, one of the first geologists to study Anning's monster skeleton, which came to be known as Ichthyosaurus, would spend his entire career trying to reconcile science and theology. He was often a mediator between the two chief players in the warring parties - Gideon Mantell and Richard Owen.

Mantell's early years promised so much, but he was to be dogged by misfortune and undermined by Owen.

The son of a shoemaker, Mantell was self-taught and trained as a country doctor. Having a rural practice in the 19th century was a gruelling battle against epidemics and disease. He devoted all his spare time to scouring quarries near his home in Lewes, Sussex. He accumulated a formidable collection of fossils and wrote ground-breaking books.

In 1829 he published an article in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, which Cadbury describes as: 'The first to set out detailed evidence for an Age of Reptiles, which preceded the Age of Mammals, highlighting the order in which beasts appeared on earth.'

By 1832, he had, writes Cadbury: 'Found and identified two of the three giant land reptiles known to science, Iguanadon and Hylaeosaurus, and defined the Age of Reptiles with more clarity than anyone else'.

But he needed rich patrons and they were not forthcoming.

By contrast, Richard Owen, although also of humble origins, enjoyed a great deal of success, through a combination of luck, talent and a devious nature.

Owen, the young pretender, was determined to destroy Mantell's reputation. He gathered scientific awards and important academic appointments, courted royalty and prime ministers. Cadbury writes: 'It took time for a pattern to emerge, for people to recognise the ruthless streak beneath the charming veneer.'

For all his malevolence, Owen was a brilliant anatomist and it was he who coined the term 'dinosaur', but he wanted to steal all the glory for himself, even after Mantell's death in 1852.

Owen's reputation seemed unassailable. He was known as the 'Newton of Natural History' and knighted in 1859. That same year, his world and that of his fellow Victorians began to collapse.

After years of dithering, of 'living in hell' for fear of being pilloried, Charles Darwin finally published his Origin Of The Species.

Owen held back at first, but as part of the establishment he was forced to support the church's fundamentalist stand. It was his biggest mistake. He was no match for the razor-sharp intellect of his fellow anatomist and devoted Darwinian, Thomas Huxley.

Cadbury writes: 'Far from a Creator miraculously creating all the different species, the infinite variety of life could be explained by the principle of natural selection.'

Cadbury has penned a fascinating story of painstaking detective work and vicious in-fighting. She has a keen grasp of her subject, but manages to steer clear of the sort of scientific jargon that would have killed the book. Television and cinema have brought to life the dinosaurs. Cadbury has brought to life the scientists who discovered them.

The Dinosaur Hunters

by Deborah Cadbury

Fourth Estate $270



Bones of contention