No one disputes that racism and sexism played prominent roles in the history of paleontology, as they played prominent roles in the history of every major field of study. The first director of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS), a naturalist and archaeologist also responsible for bringing major paleontological finds to the museum, was a member of the KKK. The English paleontologist Mary Anning long was shut out of male-dominated paleontological society even as various men used her discoveries to build their reputations.
Critical explorations of the history of paleontology, then, should be welcome by truth seekers. Unfortunately, Elana Shever’s book on paleontology, “Making Our Beasts,” is so obsessed with race, sex, and colonialism (and, strangely, hats) that it ends up functioning largely as an exercise in confirmation bias. Unsurprising, people looking for racism and sexism everywhere tend to see it even where it does not exist.
Shever, an anthropologist, will speak on paleontology March 18 at the DMNS. Perhaps museum leaders see the event as part of the museum’s self-flagellatory response to news about its first director.
A tale of hats
Much of Shever’s book is about Dinosaur Ridge, the Morrison Natural History Museum, and DMNS, three of Colorado’s paleontological hubs.
Shever opens her book with a vignette about “Carl,” a volunteer at Dinosaur Ridge. (See my article about why the tracks at Dinosaur Ridge need serious protection.) Shever notices, “Today, as usual, he is wearing Dinosaur Ridge’s unofficial uniform: a forest-green cargo vest, khaki cargo pants, work boots, and a wide-brimmed canvas hat with a leather strap.”
Cue the sinister music. Carl was not just dressing to “look the part” (“Indiana Jones” came out in 1981, setting in the public mind an image of the adventurous archaeologist, while “Jurassic Park” came out in 1993) or wearing clothing appropriate to Colorado’s harsh sun and environment. No, no, no. Shever writes, “As a retired geologist and volunteer paleontology guide, Carl, particularly his body, comportment, and dress, convey the gendering of science.”
Further: “Carl wore the clothes typical of geologists, an outfit not only normatively male but, more specifically, one that reproduces the masculinity of those scientist-explorers who have traveled the North American continent since the nineteenth century.”
Well, yeah, I guess hats, pants, and boots are pretty typical of people walking around in the arid wilderness.
You’ll never guess what Shever wears in a promotional photo advertising her talk at DMNS. Yep: She wears tan pants, boots, and a wide-brimmed hat. But her hat is a cute green, so I guess it doesn’t count as “gendering science” and “reproducing masculinity.” (Interestingly, the photo on the DMNS web site was updated somewhere between March 7 and March 10.)
Shever returns to the hat theme while discussing her meeting in Morrison with the Texas paleontologist Robert Bakker, who also does a lot of work out of Colorado. Shever writes: “On the day I first met him at the Morrison Museum, he looked much like his movie doppelgänger [in Jurassic Park, for which he consulted]. The only difference was that his signature cowboy hat rested on the microscope he was using to examine a fossil rather than on his head. Although Bakker maintained he wore it to avoid sunburns, and not as ‘a political statement,’ I saw him wearing it indoors—while teaching school groups, speaking at a fundraiser, giving a talk at the Denver Comic Convention, and working in the fossil prep lab—as well as out-doors in the sun. In fact, after my initial encounter, I can hardly remember a time I saw him without a cowboy hat.”
Like oh, my, god. A Texan wears his hat indoors. Scandalous! Indoor cowboy hat wearing, incidentally, is something Coloradans see practically on a daily basis.
Shever’s take: “Bakker’s cowboy hat is more than the pinnacle of his signature style. Wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, his cowboy hat indicated the rough frontier masculinity of the white men who went on expeditions across the ‘Wild West.'”
By the way, Dinosaur Ridge’s paleontology director now is the accomplished scientist Amy Atwater (as I’ve mentioned). Thankfully, for her staff photo, she is just wearing a red blouse and not a hat at all. But, tragically, although Atwater wears her feminism on her sleeve, I did find a photo of her wearing the signature work pants, work boots, and wide-brimmed hat, although perhaps she gets a pass because her hat is woven straw not of the cowboy style.
Usually when I see a hat I see a hat. When Shever sees a hat she sees so much more. I guess it takes extensive anthropological training to perceive such hidden meanings.
Shever is not done with poor Carl. She continues, “Carl also spoke with the authority and knowledge of a scientific expert, a position long gendered as male. I observed Dinosaur Ridge’s female guides taking on the same dress and voice, sometimes deluging visitors with even more facts than their male counterparts, in order to assert their scientific authority.”
This nicely illustrates the game of “heads I win tails you lose” that Shever is playing. If a man at Dinosaur Ridge shares facts with “authority,” that’s a sign of the male gendering of paleontology. But if a woman at Dinosaur Ridge shares even more facts with authority, that also is a sign of the male gendering of paleontology! Shever finds what she wants to find. But I do tip my hat to her academic, uh, inventiveness.
Shever concedes dinosaurs are real
Consider this strange line from Shever’s book: “While some scholars view dinosaurs as malleable cultural constructions. . .” I’ll return to the rest of the sentence later. Here I want to focus on the idea that dinosaurs might be cultural or social constructs. Before you strain your neck rolling your eyes, let’s try to get a handle on what Shever is after.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “social construct” in the context of gender and race. Those are illustrative comparisons because they show that, to a substantial degree, such things really do depend on social views. Things like expected clothes and legal rights for women have a great deal to do with ideas that people hold about women, often ideas ungrounded in facts. David Bernstein discusses how racial categories in the U.S. are largely arbitrary.
The problem is pushing the notion of social construction too far. That men are born with a penis and women are born with a vagina (a tiny number of exceptions aside, and prior to transgender identification) is not a social construct; it is an objective fact. In fact, men on average (with exceptions) have more testosterone and more muscle. That black people are more prone to sickle cell anemia, and white people more prone to skin cancer, is not a social construct. The key, then, is to discern what is rooted in social habits and ideology and what is rooted in deeper facts.
To her credit, Shever flatly rejects the notion that dinosaurs are purely social constructs. Not that I think that anyone actually believes otherwise, because that would be idiotic.
Shever writes, “Paleontological practitioners work arduously and creatively to bring fossils into being, but this does not mean that people make them in any way they please. . . . I refuse the cultural constructionist (and creationist) claim that people make dinosaurs into ‘mirrors’ of their social world.” In other words, yes, dinosaurs were real. Whew! Glad we got that one out of the way!
T. rex and masculinity
Shever shows how improved knowledge can change how fossils are displayed. She discusses the T. rex in the DMNS lobby as “standing upright on one foot,” which to her shows that people made T. rex into a “vicious killer with an unusual charisma that attracts people.” But, as every fossil buff today knows (and as Shever mentions), unlike depictions in long-ago drawings, such predators did not stand upright with tail dragging, but rather had a horizontal posture, with head out front. We know this thanks to the work of paleontologists.
The T. rex really was a vicious predator regardless of sex. But no one “in the know” thinks that ferocity is all there is to the T. rex. The standard view is that T. rex not only mated but hunted socially in packs and scavenged as well as hunted. A few years ago when the “Sue Rex” fossils came to DMNS (the specimen was named after the woman who found it, not the specimen’s sex, which is unknown), what most struck me were signs that Sue had rotted teeth and multiple injuries. Poor beast!
Shever treats paleontology as promoting the view of T. rex as the archetypal “enormous, vicious, masculine, and charismatic killer.” Yet she downplays evidence from her own book to the contrary, such as a remark from the director of the Morrison Museum that “even dinosaurs like T. rex were not always bloodthirsty killers.”
Shever also usually downplays any recognition within paleontology of the female. For example, when poor Carl dares to guess that a pair of dinosaur tracks belonged to mother and child, he is not making way for female dinosaurs; instead, he “gendered the adult dinosaur as female, and presented her as playing a traditional feminine role of caring for a child.” When a type of duck-billed dinosaur was named Maiasaura or “good mother” in 1979, that is not evidence against Shever’s masculinity thesis; it is “the exception [that] proves the rule.” When the unrealistic 2013 animated film “Walking with Dinosaurs” (which my child loved) presented the Pachyrhinosaurus as a social herding species (which it was), it does not get credit from Shever as undercutting her vicious masculinity thesis; rather, it shows only that the film “pushed anthropomorphism” beyond reasonable limits.
Shever does concede that stories such as that of a woman crying over a dinosaur rib “complicate the discussion of charismatic violence.” She also contrasts the perceived “viciousness” of T. rex teeth with “sympathetic and familiar” footprints of juvenile Stegosaurs and with people’s experiences with vertebrae from large plant eaters.
Let’s return to the line from before. Here’s the complete sentence: “While some scholars view dinosaurs as malleable cultural constructions, most people who visit parks like Dinosaur Ridge assume that the fossils they see entombed in rock are traces of prehistory that have not changed in millions of years.”
But does anyone (other than small children) actually think that? Generally people with even a passing knowledge of the subject realize that fossils form over long periods of time, remain subject to geologic forces, and come into exhibition only through arduous preparation. Parts of Shever’s book seem to be about making stuff up about what various people supposedly believe.
The flagellation of the paleontologists
Back to the whipping boy, poor Carl. Shever continues in her introduction: “It is also important to pay attention to what is left out of Carl’s tour. Most of Dinosaur Ridge’s guides tell visitors heroic tales about the first fossil hunters who came to this part of Colorado, and the famous species of dinosaurs first discovered there. Missing from all the tours I took was any critical discussion of paleontology’s involvement in white settler colonialism. Since the founding of the United States, the search for fossils in the Western territories has been framed as a scientific adventure, one that revealed treasures hidden within the country’s vast and untapped land. . . . Dinosaur Ridge is one among many places that perpetuate myths about the Western frontier and celebrate the scientific value of colonialism, while erasing its violence and paleontology’s role in dispossessing native peoples.”
No one disputes that paleontology in North America proceeded with western expansion. No one disputes that European people often spoke of paleontology using the language of expansion. But, by and large, paleontology hardly was a driver of western expansion. Generally, Europeans didn’t settle the West to find ancient bones; people found bones in the West in the wake of expansion.
Still, various paleontologists have recognized the uncomfortable alliance between some early paleontologists and the expansionists, as well as the tendency of many paleontologists to dismiss the findings of native peoples. See a 2023 article from the Smithsonian and a 2021 article on the “racism and colonialism in Western paleontology.”
Yet Shever often writes as though paleontologists have not recognized the problems that she discusses, even though she cites articles by paleontologists on the topic. Moreover, Shever in her book in anthropology barely acknowledges the far more troublesome past of her own field. Apparently the self-flagellation that is good for the geese of paleontology is unnecessary for the gander of anthropology.
I think most people who visit Dinosaur Ridge are aware of the history of European-descended settlers displacing native peoples. Generally, people go to Dinosaur Ridge to learn about dinosaurs, not to hear yet another guilt-ridden lecture about colonialism. There is more to life than critical theory.
That said, Shever rightly points out that, insofar as staff and volunteers at Dinosaur Ridge discuss the history of the Rooney family that at one point owned the land on which the site sits, they should mention that Alexander Rooney participated in the horrific Sand Creek Massacre and that the Rooneys “took part in dispossessing the Utes and other native peoples of their land and its resources.” Notably, for her claim about Rooney’s cavalry participation, Shever cites a 2010 Friends of Dinosaur Ridge publication. Visitors to the site can handle the full truth about its history.
Shever respects paleontology
Ultimately, Shever’s book shows her enthusiasm and respect for the subject. Consider this line: “Paleontology is sometimes looked down on by scientists in other fields for being too old-fashioned, too popular, too impassioned. Paleontology is all these things, but that does not make it inferior to other sciences. In fact, I argue, science requires affective engagement with the material world. Paleontology offers a paradigm for how it can be done across the sciences.”
So Shever’s book is by no means an anti-paleontology screed. Shever spends a lot of time describing her experiences in the field and at DMNS. Anyone with the patience to read the book will learn a lot from it about the history and practice of paleontology.
Readers also will come across quite a lot of pretentious silliness. In response to the academic school of “Posthumanist Science and Technology Studies,” Shever affirms that “fossils, gemstones, and pieces of granite . . . do things that affect others, but not in the same ways that people do.” Deep, man. Then there’s the bit about how Shever “fuses” the “Marxist and posthumanist” “meanings of ‘materialism.'” You knew such name-dropping was coming, right?
Nevertheless, you might want to read the book (free to download) if you’re interested in paleontology and its history. Just be sure to avoid wearing any wide-brimmed hat while reading it.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
