Life of the Past

How Government Support Shaped a Science

Jane P. Davidson

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780253033581
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geology & Earth Sciences

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, North American and European governments generously funded the discoveries of such famous paleontologists and geologists as Henry de la Beche, William Buckland, Richard Owen, Thomas Hawkins, Edward Drinker Cope, O. C. Marsh, and Charles W. Gilmore. In Patrons of Paleontology, Jane Davidson explores the motivation behind this rush to fund exploration, arguing that eagerness to discover strategic resources like coal deposits was further fueled by patrons who had a genuine passion for paleontology and the fascinating creatures that were being unearthed. These early decades of government support shaped the way the discipline grew, creating practices and enabling discoveries that continue to affect paleontology today.

1

THE BEGINNINGS OF GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR PALEONTOLOGY

We strike Bitter Creek and follow it east into a howling wilderness where water is scarce and bad and grizzly bear aplenty.

—Edward Cope, Letter written to his brother, James, July 1872, while Cope was working for the Hayden Survey

In studying the life of Jefferson, I am constantly impressed with his likeness to Theodore Roosevelt. They were the only two naturalists, or even nature-lovers, who filled our presidential chair. Roosevelt had the greater opportunity; Jefferson was the greater genius. Roosevelt lived in the full tide of modern paleontology; Jefferson lived (1743–1826) before the science of paleontology was even born.

—Henry F. Osborn, “Thomas Jefferson as a Paleontologist”

Naming a discipline is no mean achievement.

—Gian Battista Vai and William Cavazza, “Ulisse Aldrovandi and the Origin of Geology and Science”

Is it not incumbent upon workers in science to keep green the memory of those whose traditions we have inherited.

—George Brown Goode, in Max Meisel’s A Bibliography of American Natural History, The Pioneer Century 1769–1865

Seventy years ago a young archaeologist named William G. Haag was working on a PhD in cultural anthropology and archaeology from the University of Kentucky. He had no prospects for a job upon completion of his degree, but like many during the tail end of the Great Depression, he had found work with the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Dr. Haag hired a crew of unemployed Appalachian coal miners to excavate ancient Native American sites that would soon be submerged by the rising waters of various Tennessee Valley Authority projects. Thirty years on, Dr. Haag would recall his experiences for me when I interviewed him in 1969 while writing a master’s thesis on the WPA and Native Americans. He told me about how a government reclamation and flood control project had turned to an archaeological survey in order to preserve artifacts that would have been otherwise forever lost. And it provided a source of reliable income for him and the men he hired. He spoke of the dignity of his crew members who felt that they were “taking Mr. Roosevelt’s money and not digging enough. We are strong miners, Professor. We can dig down that whole hill in one day. Some shovels full of dirt are not right. We are not working hard enough for the good money we are making.”¹ And so, somewhat out of necessity, Dr. Haag had trained his men to be field researchers and remembered how excited they would be when a trowel turned up a shard or a flint. They would proudly come to get him to show him their finds. “Look, Professor, is this important? I think it looks like a shard.”

Dr. Haag did not comment on whether he knew that his project and his workers were part of a centuries-old history of support for science by governments.

This book is a history of governmental support for the science of paleontology and, since paleontology was combined with geology for a long time, provides a more specific history of geology per se where that is pertinent. Primarily, however, it is a history of important contributions to paleontology that were sponsored in some way by various government supports. Virtually every important contribution to paleontology, and not incidentally the careers of every important paleontologist, was related to government support. Designed as a historical outline of what these important contributions were, who made them, and how these persons were supported by a government entity, it is also by default a history of most of the important paleontologists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, because this is the time frame in which the science of paleontology blossomed. Thus, what is covered here is not only field research but important publications as well since, as indicated above, support ran the gamut from fieldwork and laboratory research to preparation of specimens and published outcomes. Some of the publication landmarks of paleontology were printed as US Geological Survey reports. Edward Hitchcock’s Ichnology of New England (1858), Edward Drinker Cope’s The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (1883), and O. C. Marsh’s Dinosaurs of North America (1896) are examples. This book also discusses the ancillary support that surveys gave to paleontologists in the form of guides, drovers, and cavalrymen. As well, it discusses various members of government entities, from paleontologists to ordinary soldiers, who were involved in discoveries.

How It Began and When It Began

Paleontologists looked for sources of funding for their work right from the beginning of the science. But even before there were such persons as professional geologists or paleontologists, there were scientists who were searching for funding. Unless one was independently wealthy, scientific exploration, research, and the publication of results required money. And with a few exceptions, it seems that scientists were not usually well-to-do. Initially, wealthy individual patrons, not necessarily members of “government,” may have provided most of the support for paleontology. These patrons appeared as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century. But from the beginning of paleontology there were also important discoveries that were made possible by components of government. For example, Robert Plot’s Natural History of Oxfordshire (1676, which contained the first illustration of a dinosaur fossil (in the form of an engraving of a partial femur of Megalosaurus), was supported by a large number of British country gentry in the shire who had paid Plot to visit their lands and study its natural resources, and who then subventioned his book. Plot conducted what amounted to geological surveys. His patrons provided precedents for later governmental sponsorship of paleontology, and his work was a blueprint for survey publications. It even contained a very detailed map of towns, cities, and lands belonging to various members of the gentry. This was not a topographical map in the modern sense, of course, although Plot did talk about topographical features in his book.

Important government-sponsored contributions to paleontology from the late 1500s to the eighteenth century were the background for more organized governmental survey support in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I will discuss various important nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century paleontologists and their discoveries as well as any important publications that were sponsored by “surveys,” a term I use in the most general sense. Surveys may be local, state, or national in scope. All will be discussed here. Also, as a part of the study of how governments supported and, in fact, created paleontology, I will devote attention to institutional publishers, such as the Smithsonian (National Museum of Natural History), which brought out many noteworthy works, such as Joseph Leidy’s Ancient Fauna of Nebraska (1853) and his Cretaceous Reptiles of the United States (1865). Included as a chapter or as parts of chapter will be discussions of why various government entities supported paleontology, and why paleontologists went to them for financial assistance or publishing outlets. This discussion enhances the premise of this book that without governmental assistance to paleontology, that field of science would have turned out vastly different.

University professors everywhere in the United States today are accustomed to filling out a form each year stating whether they had or did not have governmental monetary support or employment. It is a gentle annoyance to humanities professors who feel no need to state the obvious, which is no, of course they did not have financial conflicts of interest. This sort of support is for scientists. Many never stop to think that support from some form of “government,” whether from a specific authority, a ruler, or a ruling body, is a characteristic of culture and science that has its roots as least as far back as the fifteenth century. Long before there was such a thing as paleontology, there was support for the study of fossils. We are able to demonstrate this by means of records, such as letters written by paleontologists to possible patrons, published accounts of support, and dedicatory statements in the texts.

The modern methodology of collecting fossils, displaying them, and disseminating information was established in Early Modern Europe by prominent political leaders and the scientists who worked for them. Here I am using the term “political leader” in a very broad sense. As was noted, some early patrons of paleontology were members of nobility, but others were leaders of the Catholic Church. They were persons of authority and rulers of various kinds. In some cases those who were patrons of paleontology were wealthy commoners. What all these individuals had in common was power, influence, and money.

This last was most likely the case of the individual for whom a very early depiction of fossil shark teeth was painted. About 1449 the Flemish master Petrus Christus (active about 1444; died around 1475 or 1476) painted a panel entitled A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly St. Eligius. This masterpiece of Flemish Renaissance painting is owned today by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The painting depicts a goldsmith who wears the traditional red cap of a physician or apothecary. By tradition, St. Eligius was both. He was also a veterinarian. There seems to have been an actual historical person, Eligius, who lived in France in the late sixth century. He came to the attention and enjoyed the patronage of the Frankish king. Christus’s work was most likely not painted for royalty, although it could have been as he worked in Bruges. Bruges was the political capital of the French Netherlands provinces. Christus, like his contemporary, Jan van Eyck, enjoyed the support of wealthy and highly placed patrons. What is of interest herein is that Christus depicted the saint’s goldsmith shop filled with all sorts of wonderful jewels and other rarities. Among the golden chalices, rock crystals, and coral branches in the saint’s shop one sees two fossil shark teeth. These are probably the first depictions of fossils in European art. Their presence indicates the interest in such items as fossils among the wealthy upper classes of Europe. When Christus executed this painting, fossil shark teeth were not understood. People had certainly noticed that these items seemed organic in form, but they were stones. How could they have been a part of an animal that had petrified? Thus, fossil shark teeth were called “tongue stones” or glossopetrae. In German they were called Natternzungen, which means “adder tongues.” Fossil shark teeth were valuable rarities to have in one’s Kunstkamer, a collection of beautiful and rare items (the term translates literally as “a room of art”). They were also used in folk and established medicine, and as amulets. By default, the presence of fossils in a jeweler’s shop also indicates support from “governmental” entities for at least the collection and the discussion of such items. These comments may seem like a stretch of logic, but they are not. Without question wealthy individuals would have wanted to possess fossil shark teeth. If it were otherwise, Christus would not have included them in his realistic depiction of a jeweler’s shop. He may have even owned some fossil shark teeth. He certainly had seen them (Davidson 2008, 2–5).

One may well ask, in effect, where did all the geologists and paleontologists come from? As silly as it sounds, one could reply that Aristotle was interested in everything, including natural history and geology, so it just makes sense that these early Renaissance scientists would emulate him. And they did. Government patrons were also, at times, themselves very interested in gathering knowledge about many things. This knowledge could be useful in itself, but it could also help the patron gain financially or in power. Concomitant with the study of geological formations, forces, and fossils was the search for mineral wealth. As early as Georgius Agricola’s (born Georg Bauer, 1494–1555) study of mining techniques (what we would now call “mining engineering”), early geoscientists and their sponsors were involved with purely economic concerns. De re metallica (Agricola 1556) was such a work. It was so important and extensive that it remains to modern times as a fine example of a synopsis, almost a textbook, on the state of sixteenth-century mining technology. The search for mineral wealth, or other valuable geological products, such as peat and coal, continued well beyond the Early Modern period. Indeed it continues still. Fossils were (and still are) sometimes by-products of surveys or explorations designed primarily to look for useful mineral deposits. But, and fairly early on, it became clear that fossils might be indicators of where to look. The concept of the “index fossil,” which designated the age or content of various strata, developed early (though the term wasn’t used formally for centuries). But this was not the only value attached to fossils by the scientists and their patrons.

In the Early Modern period there was an increasing interest in what we might today call “natural history.” This could also include the study of rocks and minerals, fossils (although these were hardly understood per se in the sixteenth century), and geological...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Beginnings of Government Support for Paleontology
• 2. Eighteenth-Century and Early Nineteenth-Century Paleontologists and Patrons
• 3. Developments in Government Support for Paleontology in the United States between 1830 and about 1880
• 4. Paleontology in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Surveys Outside the United States
• 5. Government Support for Paleontology in the Late Nineteenth Century and the Turn of the Twentieth Century: 1880 to about 1940
• Conclusion: The Chain of Paleontology
• Appendix: Glossary of Prominent Patrons and Paleontologists
• Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources
• Bibliography of Secondary Sources
• Index
• About the Author