King of the Dinosaur Hunters

October 1, 2018
From a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, an exhaustive biography of an adventurous bone hunter, a leading figure in the heroic age of American paleontology.Son of an Illinois farmer and fascinated by fossils, John Bell Hatcher (1861-1904) worked his way through Yale and impressed superiors who sent him west to where rich, new fossil beds had produced a rush of professional diggers and amateur fortune hunters. He quickly proved his value, finding and shipping east tons of precious fossils and fossil-bearing material but also showing a precision and delicacy in dealing with the specimens--which, despite being rock, are delicate--that became the accepted technique. For 20 years, he was in great demand, producing a steady stream of discoveries from digs in the United States and Patagonia despite working under often miserable conditions. Promoted to curator of paleontology at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh in 1900, Hatcher, who had health problems throughout his life, died suddenly at age 42. Hatcher's prolific correspondence to his employers has been largely preserved, and his discoveries sit in museums across the world. This is ample raw material for an engaging biography, but Dingus (Hell Creek, Montana: America's Key to the Prehistoric Past, 2004, etc.) mostly draws on it to deliver an extremely detailed, chronological record of Hatcher's travels, travails, and discoveries, a relentless series of itineraries, equipment inventories, expenses, business quarrels, descriptions of bones discovered, their species, and ultimate destination, often including their museum catalog number in case readers want to look them up. The author also includes a 14-page glossary of genera.There is no lack of fascinating anecdotes, but mostly this is a dense catalog that will primarily interest paleontology buffs. Readers searching for a history of the stormy late-19th-century dinosaur discoveries should try The Bonehunters' Revenge (1999) by David Rains Wallace.

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October 8, 2018
While it’s true that John Bell Hatcher (1861–1904) was one of the 19th century’s most prolific fossil hunters, this deeply flawed biography by Dingus (Barnum Brown: The Man Who Discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex, coauthor), an American Museum of Natural History research associate, does little to reveal his subject’s humanity or mystique. Although Dingus provides excruciating detail about the many fossils Hatcher collected throughout western North America and shipped back to Yale, Princeton, and the Carnegie Museum beginning in 1884, virtually no information is presented about any other collector, so the reader lacks any context to judge Hatcher’s record. Much of the material presented arises from Hatcher’s letters to his employers, dealing with mundane matters like salaries and reimbursements for himself and his assistants and conveying little of the excitement of scientific discovery. Remarkably few personal facts appear—it isn’t until a full year after the fact that Dingus reveals Hatcher was married, and not until the penultimate chapter that he had seven children, three of whom died before the age of four. The book does give paleontology enthusiasts a sense of the challenges involved in 19th-century fossil hunting, at least in Hatcher’s case, but leaves them with little insight into the man himself.

November 15, 2018

With this fascinating work, Dingus (research associate, American Museum of Natural History; coauthor, The Mistaken Extinction) eulogizes paleontologist John Bell Hatcher (1861-1904), known as "the king of the collectors." The author's enthusiasm for his subject is apparent; as is the volume of research he conducted to write this biography. While Hatcher is the central character, readers interested in the Bone Wars--a race in the American West between paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope to collect the most fossils and describe more new species--will be rewarded with information about that saga's varied cast of characters. Complete with extensive appendixes detailing Hatcher's collections, this is a fitting addition to the oeuvre alongside Tom Rea's Bone Wars: The Excavation of Andrew Carnegie's Dinosaur. VERDICT An excellent new science biography that will be popular with readers who already have an interest in paleontology or those who would like to develop one.--Esther Jackson, New York Botanical Garden

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2018
John Bell Hatcher is a key figure in the history of paleontology. Not only did he collect thousands of fossil specimens and discover numerous species of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but he refined methods for carefully extracting and preserving fossils from the bedrocks and cliffs in which they're found. Hatcher was also a talented geologist who taught a generation of paleontologists the geological clues to finding fossils. In this lengthy biography, Dingus, researcher for the American Museum of Natural History, recounts the year-by-year field work of an admired but complicated man. Devoted to his work, Hatcher loved but rarely saw his family, frequently clashed with his employers over inadequate funding and misleading scientific reporting, and often became great friends of the very same people with whom he had the greatest conflicts. Readers learn of the great hardships of late-nineteenth-century paleontology and where to see Hatcher's mounted dinosaurs today. For public libraries with a steady demand for dinosaur books.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)