The Griffin and the Dinosaur: How Adrienne Mayor Discovered a Fascinating Link Between Myth and Science

I was disappointed. There was a lot about the book to recommend it to me: a really excellent cover illustration showing a griffin and a Protoceratops skeleton, an author, Marc Aronson, whose work I have previously enjoyed, a subject, the relation of ancient myths to fossils that would certainly interest me.

But too much of it is an Adrienne Mayor biography, and it tries to make drama out of very little real adventure. Mayor was born in 1946, and hit the big time with her first speculations about the ancient Greeks and their fossil hunting ways in 2000 with her first book, published when she was 54. So, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mayor is a late literary bloomer. This book was published in 2014, when Mayor was as the height of her show more literary popularity and had just published a book about Amazons.

What is there to dislike about the book? It is just very forced. It is misleading. And it, like so many other books, wants to convince me that I'm a chronological snob.

"We were all too ready to believe that only people like us - modern people with computers and smartphones - could possibly have made good sense of the world around them. People of antiquity, our ancestors, must have been irrational, superstitious, blind to the evidence around them."

There is no reason to believe that smartphones help people make good sense of the world around them. And, given that moderns can be quite irrational, why should ancient people have been less irrational. "blind to the evidence around them"? Evidence for what, exactly? And not all people who lived long ago are my ancestors; only the ones I'm descended from. This is sloppy, conventional, writing.

It also represents the Greeks of 370 BC as a unified bunch in the following sentence: "Megalopolis" means "Giant City" and that was the name the ancient Greeks gave to a city they built in about 370 BC." "The ancient Greeks" did not gather to build this city; it was constructed during a combination slave revolt and invasion by some alliance of slaves and a Theban led army in an effort to undermine the power of Sparta in its home territories. There should be a better way to simplify without entirely misleading.

Finally the book seems to use this argument: you were a chronological bigot, but I have persuaded you out of your bigotry. Therefore everything that the ancients believed must have been true, i.e., those Protoceratops fossils were really the bodies of griffins. That is not a good argument; I am unconvinced. show less

I've read several "the glory of research" books and was left completely uninterested. This, however, was different.

The book starts with a brief chapter introducing Adrienne Mayor. She was not traditionally educated, with degrees, but she was curious and observed the world around her, had access to libraries and travel, and was looking for something to be her passion. Then she decided to research mythological creatures, specifically the griffin, and see if they had basis in fact. This book takes us through her research, finally relating the myth of the griffin to ancient people's observation of fossilized dinosaur bones. Along the way she suffered many setbacks but also received help from sympathetic professors and in the end not only show more proved her theory but showed that the observations of "uneducated" people could be important.

The book is in a large, picture-book format and has only 50 pages. But those pages are crammed with photographs, illustrations, maps, artifacts, and, of course, text. The text is presented in columns, which I found a little off-putting. Back matter includes further reading, resources, glossary, index, and a note from Marc Aronson on his involvement in the book.

While this isn't the typical nonfiction book I'd purchase for my library, several things set this apart. The lively writing draws the reader in through a high-interest topic - mythological creatures and dinosaurs - and keeps their interest by following the twists and turns of the plot. It's presented as an adventure with a mystery and kids will definitely stay with this one to find out the solution to all the clues.

Verdict: The layout is not quite what I would like - anything that looks like a picture book is a hard sell for my older readers (and their parents). However, the book itself rises above that and will definitely grab kids' attention. Recommended.

ISBN: 9781426311086; Published 2014 by National Geographic; Borrowed from another library in my consortium show less

Personally, 3.5 rounded up because if I were a kid I would have loved this, been inspired to read more non-fiction, and probably been inspired to have a similar career trajectory as did Mayor. World travel? Scholarship? Exploration? Science? Authorship? She's done it all. How fun, and how satisfying.

(Sorry, I don't know what exactly is imperfect about it for me right now... something idiosyncratic I'm sure. I do recommend the book.)

An enticing story for young and old, a detective story of ancient times
An exciting adventure in a way, this story begins with Adrienne Mayor born in 1946, as a young schoolgirl who is fascinated by mythology and in particular with the story of the Griffin. How does a shy, quiet kid from Souix Falls, South Dakota, come to develop a new field of research - geomythology? This book by Marc Aronson follows her path as student from country to country as she searches through ancient texts about mythical creatures. This is no easy task as she learns ancient languages in order to read these texts.

How Adrienne is able to discover what others miss is the way she thinks. She is sure that these ancient people had to have seen something real, even if show more only bones. She knows she is onto something meaningful and very early in history. At first she knows very little about these early dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but she is determined and learns. Her goal is set on the Griffin. There must have been bones of a real animal to influence the people of the time. Therefore, she must go back through the pages of time to find one thing. Where did the first story come from, and why? The Griffin was said to protect gold. Where was gold found along with prehistoric bones? This is how she progressed until finally finding the link from paleontology to her "Griffin."

An enticing story for young and old, a detective story of how to seek and find from the most ancient of times. The fascination of paleontology captures our imagination already, and here the vision of what can be discovered turns to mythology. How exciting is that? show less

The fascinating and completely engrossing story of a largely self-taught scholar's irrepressible quest to discover the scientific basis of a mythological creature. This is the sort of book that will spark the imagination of readers and inspire them to seek their own answers to questions through research, observation, and investigation.