But Native American discoveries and conceptions of fossils-this was unexplored territory, full of exciting possibilities for understanding pre-Darwinian ideas about paleontology. And I’d read about the pioneer paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Marsh battling over dinosaur bones in the American West. Suddenly we all were wondering out loud: What did Native Americans think of these bizarre skeletons mysteriously turned to stone? How did they explain the bones and teeth and claws of gigantic creatures that no one had ever seen alive? Did they speculate about what could have destroyed such monsters? Did they collect fossils?Īs a scholar of natural history legends, I had written a book about how the ancient Greeks and Romans interpreted the remains of enormous, extinct creatures buried around the Mediterranean. ![]() ![]() They were the first to encounter dinosaur bones and other fossils buried in the earth for eons and then exposed, like our finds, by wind and rain. Long before the arrival of Europeans, Native people had been the first to experience the thrill of discovery that we had felt today. Around the campfire that night…the talk drifted to the people who had known these fossil-rich badlands better than anyone ever would: the Crow, Blackfeet, and Sioux.
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