Once We All Had Gills: Growing Up Evolutionist in an Evolving World

3. An Age of Dinosaurs

29 An Age of Dinosaurs We left Canada for Pittsburgh, a mysterious city in Pennsylvania,duringthefallof1949.Iknowthismovewasanenormous break in the lives of my parents, hopeful for my father, wrenching for my mother. The trip was just a big adventure into the unknown for me, a train journey to the faraway exotic South. Rail service was efficient and comfortable in those days, with sleepers, dining cars, and authoritative conductors wearing neat blue uniforms. There were lots of windows to gaze out from. The trip was long, and not understanding just how near theequatorwewereheaded,Iwatchedforhoursinhopesofseeingexotic creatures by trackside as we crossed into tropical Pennsylvania. Despite my hopes, I was to be disappointed by the scarcity of coiled rattlesnakes and waving palms–but not by Pittsburgh. How could it fail to satisfy? I had never seen a city before. We lived for a couple of months in the Webster Hall Hotel just across the street from Mellon Institute, where my father’s research lab was then located. At night the horizons were lit a lurid orange by the blast furnaces. The glow of the furnaces would fade outtoextinctioninPittsburghbythe1980s,andthesteelindustrywould follow.Bestofall,ourfirsttemporaryhomewasalsojusttwoblocksfrom the Carnegie Museum with its wonderful gallery of dinosaurs. My first visit to that vast, gloomy exhibit hall was unforgettable. I was eight and had never been in such a cavern. The hall contained towering chocolatecolored skeletons, monsters like nothing living today, standing silent, mouths armed with impressive teeth, leg bones the size of trees. Like most children, I was enraptured by dinosaurs. Naturally, I knew none of the scientific drama and wonderful megalomania that lay behind those three 30 Becoming a Naturalist skeletons. The dinosaurs themselves were enough for my eight-year old sensibilities. The first dinosaur rush in the American West began in the 1870s and by the 1890s had led to a public explosion of the bitter feud between two quarrelsome paleontologists, Othniel C. Marsh at Yale and Edward DrinkerCopebasedinPhiladelphia.Eachpassionatelystrovetobemaster of all dinosaur bones in the American Old West, a striving equaled only by the passion of their hatred for each other. At the turn of the century , a second round to the glory days of dinosaur discovery would follow as Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum, New York’s American Museum of Natural History, and Chicago’s Field Museum vied for spectacular specimenstoputondisplay.Thegreatdinosaurskeletonsweretheresult of extraordinarily arduous years of field work by collectors who worked underablisteringSun,enduringblowingdustandweeksofmonotonous food. They excavated mountains of rock and dirt by hand, then transported tons of fossil bones to the railroad by horse and wagon. The task ofcleaningandassemblyfelltothemuseumstaff.Nosingleskeletonwas completely preserved, so mounted skeletons had to be supplemented for exhibition with parts of other individuals. In addition, the art of mountinganenormousskeletoninstandingpostureonstrongbutunobtrusive iron supports was just being invented. The costs of prospecting, as well as the collection, preparation, and mounting of these skeletons, at Carnegie Museum were funded by the notoriousPittsburghrobberbaronandsteelmagnateAndrew Carnegie, aswasthecostofanexhibithalllargeenoughtoholdreconstructedskeletonstwicethelengthofanaverageforty -foot-longschoolbus.Carnegie in his later years accepted the responsibilities of his riches and became a philanthropist who generously funded museums, universities, research institutions, and public libraries. There was enormous competition between museums at the time for these new crowd pleasers, and Carnegie wanted his museum to have the biggest of all. As one of the wealthiest Americans ever, he had the money and will to make it happen. The great Jurassic classics, Apatosaurus (a massive creature far better known to the world as Brontosaurus), Diplodocus, and Camarosaurus were revealed to all, with their huge bodies, small heads, and long necks and tails. Carnegie was so taken by Diplodocus carnegii, named for him in 1901, that he An Age of Dinosaurs 31 enthusiasticallyfundedyetmoredinosaurexcavations.Themuseumscientists who enjoyed his patronage had insightfully named the species in his honor. They repeated the gambit, in 1915 naming Apatosaurus louisae after Carnegie’s wife. Carnegie ordered casts made of each bone of the Diplodocus skeleton. Several exact replica skeletons were used with egoboosting boasting rights and much hoopla as gifts to museums in other major countries. Only something that large could represent Carnegie’s enthusiasm for American paleontology and his self-esteem. I’ve seen some of these replicas mounted in the dinosaur halls of natural history museums in Berlin, London, and Paris. There was a spasm of paleontological embarrassment years later when it was discovered that the Apatosaurus had been unknowingly mounted with the wrong head at the end of its neck. The bones of an otherwise complete skeleton had been found minus...