Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology, (Paperback)

Publishers Weekly,History and science come together in this fascinating story of a woodland salt lick and how the fossil bones found there influenced the beginnings of paleontology in America. The saline springs of northern Kentucky's Big Bone Lick have nurtured humans and animals for centuries, and the bones of extinct mastodons, bison and other creatures are there to prove it. Biology professor emeritus Hedeen illuminates a time when the concept of extinction was considered outrageous, if not downright blasphemous, since it contradicted the biblical doctrine of a "perfect, unchanging creation." Early 18th-century naturalists believed the bones were remnants of some rare type of elephant, possibly even Asian elephants that had somehow wandered into American forests. Naturalists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon and Georges Cuvier (who coined the term "mastodon") appear alongside Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and extinction skeptic Thomas Jefferson, who sent Lewis and Clark west with a laundry list of goals that included finding "knowledge of `living Mammoth, & of the Megatherium also.' " Hedeen depicts a vibrant and exciting era, when the 1755 map notation "Elephants Bones found here" drew the attention of the whole world. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved