Documentary is York film professor's 25th for CBC "Ideas"

 

TORONTO, January 16, 2006 - Did a young girl from a poor family in Victorian England take the first steps in the discovery of what we now call dinosaurs? York University Professor Seth Feldman examines this fascinating question – and many more about how we arrived at the idea of dinosaurs – in a radio documentary for the CBC program “Ideas.” (Photo:  Seth Feldman)

 

“Inventing Dinosaurs” will air on CBC Radio One in two parts, Jan. 17 and 18 (9:05 p.m. Eastern Time). It tells the story of an odd assortment of Victorians who spent their days collecting fossils in the first half of the 19th century, before the concept of dinosaurs had emerged.

 

There was Mary Anning, the young girl who chiselled these “curiousities” out of the chalk cliffs of Lyme Regis, on the south coast of England, and sold them to tourists in order to support herself and her family. She grew up to become one of the most successful fossil collectors and respected paleontologists of her day. 

 

William Buckland, the only professor of geology at Oxford University at the time, also discovered large bones and speculated about their origins. Gideon Mantell, a country doctor, took a giant fossilized tooth and extrapolated from it the vision of giant reptiles roaming the pleasant hills of prehistoric Sussex. (Image: Mary Anning)

 

“The discovery of dozens of species of dinosaurs occurred in the last third of the 19th century, mostly in North America. But there was a period from about 1800 to 1860 when these people in England went from finding big bones and not knowing what to do with them to inventing the science of dinosaurs in bits and pieces. They laid the groundwork for the great bone race that followed – not to mention the theory of evolution,” says Feldman.

 

What Anning, Buckland and Mantell had in common was a fascination with their exotic finds, says Feldman, a York film professor who has researched and written more than 25 documentaries for “Ideas.” Anning and her brother discovered fossils of marine reptiles and flying reptiles. Buckland discovered the Megalosaurus, the first animal that was later called a dinosaur. The tooth that Mantell discovered belonged to the animal that would be classified as dinosaur number two, the Iguanodon.

 

That classification, including the word ‘dinosaur’ itself, was the work of Richard Owen, a comparative anatomist in England who, as the documentary shows, ruthlessly borrowed the work of others to become England’s foremost authority on dinosaurs. Owen had been commissioned to make sense of all these prehistoric animals, and used the term “dinosauria” to describe “fearfully great lizards” – technically speaking, land reptiles with a lower backbone structure much like a mammal.

 

Through “Inventing Dinosaurs,” writer-presenter Feldman and “Ideas” producer Sara Wolch share with CBC listeners the drama of the daily life of Anning, who became a folk hero – a kind of female Indiana Jones of fossil collecting – as well as other amateurs whose lifelong experience made them into paleontologists. The documentary draws on the wisdom of a number of living paleontologists as well as Hall Train, who is building animatronic dinosaurs in his studio in Mississauga. York University Humanities Professor Bernie Lightman, editor of the Encyclopedia of Victorian Science, offers his commentary on the culture that gave birth to these dinosaur hunters and their ideas. The documentary also features well-known Shakespearean actors Fiona Reid and Barry MacGregor as well as an original score.

 

The “Accolades to” series showcases York University’s vibrant cultural community by profiling faculty, students, alumni and friends who deserve accolades for their outstanding achievements and contributions to the fine arts. Supporting this creative talent, York’s new Accolade buildings will offer Canada's future artists, scholars and educators a state-of-the-art teaching, exhibition and performance complex in which to learn, create and innovate. Opening in 2005/2006, the Accolade Project reflects York’s stature as a rising cultural powerhouse and key partner in Toronto's cultural renaissance.

 

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For more information, contact:
Janice Walls, Media Relations, York University, 416-736-2100 x22101/wallsj@yorku.ca