Research Catalog

The rhinoceros and the megatherium : an essay in natural history / Juan Pimentel ; translated by Peter Mason.

Title
The rhinoceros and the megatherium : an essay in natural history / Juan Pimentel ; translated by Peter Mason.
Author
Pimentel, Juan
Publication
Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextRequest in advance QL737.U63 P5313 2017Off-site

Details

Additional Authors
Mason, Peter
Description
356 pages : illustrations; 22 cm
Summary
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 "Dürer's Rhinoceros," after the German artist's iconic woodcut. His portrait was inaccurate--Dürer 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.--
Uniform Title
Rinoceronte y el megaterio. English
Alternative Title
Rinoceronte y el megaterio.
Subject
  • Rhinoceroses > Morphology > History
  • Megatherium > Morphology > History
  • Rhinoceroses in art
  • Megatherium > In art
  • Animals and history > Europe
  • Zoology > Europe > History
Note
  • "First published as El Rinoceronte y el Megaterio: un ensayo de morfologia historica by Abada Editores, S. L., copyright (c) 2010."--Title page verso
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
Prologue: Analogy and essay -- Part one. The armoured pachyderm: Itinerary -- Words -- Print -- Part two. A strange cadaver: Chimera -- Bones -- Fossil -- Epilogue: Circular lives.
ISBN
  • 9780674737129
  • 0674737121
LCCN
^^2016019990
OCLC
  • 946907365
  • SCSB-11875632
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library