Every Palaeocast podcast to which I’ve listened – and I have every reason to believe I now listened to them all – has been very much worth the time spent doing so and far more beside in the understanding of the subjects they have presented. However, while they are all well done, some still stand out above the rest. Most recently, one of these stand-outs was Episode 126: Beasts Before Us.
With vivid and compelling illustrations provided by Gabriel Ugueto, Prof. Garrod leads his readers – with the enthusiasm about his subjects for which he has become so well known and respected – through what is presently known about this very curious Ordovician creature.
Published by The Dovecote Press, the small Dorset-based independent publisher from which originally emerged the award-winning Little Toller Books as an imprint in 2009, Tom Sharpe’s “The Fossil Woman; a Life of Mary Anning” presents a “fresh and often surprising look at the achievements of a woman who is finally gaining the recognition she merits.”
What did our ancestors who were unfamiliar with the origins of the fossilized remains of prehistoric creatures make of them? Did they recognize such things as belemnites, brachiopods, bits of vertebral columns, and other curious, stone objects extracted from the ground as the remains of creatures from long ago? If so, were such creatures factual or fantastic? And in any case, what useful qualities – or even extraordinary, perhaps even magical, powers – did they assume these mysterious objects might posses?