Books by Keith Stewart Thomson

The uncovering in the mid-1700s of fossilized mastodon bones and teeth at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, signaled the beginning of a great American adventure. The West was opening up and unexplored lands beckoned. Unimagined paleontological treasures awaited discovery: strange horned mammals, birds with teeth, flying reptiles, gigantic fish, diminutive ancestors of horses and camels, and more than a hundred different kinds of dinosaurs. This exciting book tells the story of the grandest period of fossil discovery in American history, the years from 1750 to 1890.The volume begins with Thomas Jefferson, whose keen interest in the American mastodon led him to champion the study of fossil vertebrates. The book continues with vivid descriptions of the actual work of prospecting for fossils--a pick in one hand, a rifle in the other--and enthralling portraits of Joseph Leidy, Ferdinand Hayden, Edward Cope, and Othniel Marsh among other major figures in the development of the science of paleontology. Shedding new light on these scientists feuds and rivalries, on the connections between fossil studies in Europe and America, and on paleontologys contributions to Americas developing national identity, The Legacy of the Mastodon is itself a fabulous discovery for every reader to treasure.

Looking at the aesthetic, literary and intellectual aspects of science, this work sets out to convey what is involved in being a scientist today. Science is described as a great adventure, a search for why things are as they are.

Reintroduces us to Thomas Jefferson's eighteenth-century world and reveals how Jefferson used science, thought about it, contributed to it, and became the leading scientific intellectual of his time. This book shows us a new side of Jefferson.

Intends to inquire into the range of influences and ideas, the mentors and rivals, and the formal and informal education that shaped Charles Darwin and prepared him for his remarkable career of scientific achievement. This book reveals both his genius as a scientist and the human foibles and weaknesses with which he mightily struggled.

"An engrossing tale of obsession, adventure and scientific reasoning." -Betty Ann Kevles, Los Angeles Times