Written in Stone

Brian Switek assembles the paleontology of the mid 1800's with references as recent as last year in "Written in Stone." He documents how world views changed as new fossils were discovered, often fossils that were sitting in museum basements and were unexamined for decades. His latest references come from the literature of last year. The intriguing part of this book to me was that Switek instead of just saying 'Those old guys were wrong. How stupid they were. We are great.'lays out the scientific debates of the time and helps me understand why ideas that seem commonsense now seemed outlandish at the time of the discovery of the new evidence. Usually, the disconnect in my thinking came from anachronisms that I created. The evidence that I used to come to a decision did not exist when the scientists were fighting about some new fossil. Also, there is a lot more information in anatomical differences than I ever understood.