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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Zoology & animal sciences > Vertebrates > Mammals
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The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium - An Essay in Natural History (Hardcover)
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The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium - An Essay in Natural History (Hardcover)
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One animal left India in 1515, caged in the hold of a Portuguese
ship, and sailed around Africa to Lisbon-the first of its species
to see Europe for more than a thousand years. The other crossed the
Atlantic from South America to Madrid in 1789, its huge fossilized
bones packed in crates, its species unknown. How did Europeans
three centuries apart respond to these two mysterious beasts-a
rhinoceros, known only from ancient texts, and a nameless monster?
As Juan Pimentel explains, the reactions reflect deep intellectual
changes but also the enduring power of image and imagination to
shape our understanding of the natural world. We know the
rhinoceros today as "Durer's Rhinoceros," after the German artist's
iconic woodcut. His portrait was inaccurate-Durer never saw the
beast and relied on conjecture, aided by a sketch from Lisbon. But
the influence of his extraordinary work reflected a steady move
away from ancient authority to the dissemination in print of new
ideas and images. By the time the megatherium arrived in Spain,
that movement had transformed science. When published drawings
found their way to Paris, the great zoologist Georges Cuvier
correctly deduced that the massive bones must have belonged to an
extinct giant sloth. It was a pivotal moment in the discovery of
the prehistoric world. The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium offers a
penetrating account of two remarkable episodes in the cultural
history of science and is itself a vivid example of the scientific
imagination at work.
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