The First Fossil Hunters
Adrienne Mayor

Griffins, Cyclopes, Monsters, and Giants-these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts of the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than fictions? This is the arresting and original idea that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and documentation, she shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact-in ancient people's discoveries of the enormous bones of long-extinct dinosaurs, mastodons, and other animals that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans.