Ruth S. (Dixie) reviewed on 12/29/2005 + 179 more book reviews

Psihoyos, a well-known photographer who has worked for National Geographic magazine, gives these scientists celebrity treatment in a first-person account of his odyssey to fossil quarries and musuems around the world. His color photographs show paleontologists looking romantic and adventurous in the field and posing with their wonderful discoveries. Psihoyos also has a knack for telling a good story. In various episodes, he takes the skull of the late Edward Drinker Cope to visit modern paleontologists, watches FBI agents confiscate a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, and dangles on ropes to view fossils high on a cliff face. It's a bit sensationalized, but extensive quotes allow the paleontologists to speak for themselves, and they come off looking like heroes. Wallace's book is a companion to exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which is currently renovating and updating its halls of vertebrate paleontology. It relates the history of museum-sponsored expeditions of the past that were led by such noted paleontologists as Barnum Brown and Roy Chapman Andrews. Specimens from the collection are shown along with the stories of their discovery and acquisition. People who have visited the museum would especially enjoy learning about the origin of the collections, but the book can stand alone as an interesting history of discovery.

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