Jill Hunting

A pleasant little travelog/biography/whatever. There’s a famous – well, famous among paleontologists – picture that shows the 1872 Yale scientific expedition to the American West. Four Yale students are seated in front, armed with an assortment of period weaponry. A guide, a US Army lieutenant, and Yale professor O.C. Marsh stand in back.. The seated Yale student on the left is author Jill Hunting’s great-grandfather, Thomas H. Russell.

Hunting uses the Yale expedition as an anchor point for this book, and goes off on all directions from there: a history of her family; how to travel in the West in 1872 (Marsh recommended his students read The Prairie Traveler), John Brown in Kansas, the Great Diamond Hoax, Lakota Chief Red Cloud, Hollywood costumers (she wanted information on the clothes people wore), early Denver photographers (she identified the studio where the photograph was taken) and encounters with Kansans (mostly friendly).

On the expedition, Thomas Russell found a fossil of Hesperornis regalis, a Cretaceous toothed bird. Hunting visits Yale Peabody museum and tries to find the original collection site with Dr. Michael Everhart of the Sternberg Museum (see Oceans of Kansas). Ironically, there’s not that much paleontological or geological information, but the pleasant writing and eclectic topics make up for it. A plates section, endnotes, and bibliography (but, annoyingly, no index). For more on fossil collecting in the 19th century West, see A Triceretops Hunt in Pioneer Wyoming.… (mehr)