Giants of the Lost World: Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Monsters of South America

223 Pages·2016·8.43 MB·English

by  Donald R. Prothero

Text © 2016 by Donald R. Prothero All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Published by Smithsonian Books
Director: Carolyn Gleason
Managing Editor: Christina Wiginton Production Editor: Laura Harger
Editorial Assistant: Jaime Schwender Edited by Gregory McNamee
Designed by Gary Tooth
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prothero, Donald R.
Giants of the lost world : dinosaurs and other extinct monsters of South America / by Donald
R. Prothero.
Other titles: Lost world | Dinosaurs and other extinct monsters of South America Description:
Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Books, [2016] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015047514 | ISBN 9781588345738
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-58834574-5
Subjects: LCSH: Dinosaurs—South America. | Extinct animals—South America. | Doyle, Arthur
Conan, 1859–1930. Lost world.
Classification: LCC QE861.9.S68 P76 2016 | DDC 567.9098—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047514
For permission to reproduce illustrations appearing in this book, please correspond directly
with the owners of the works, as seen at the end of the figure caption. Smithsonian Books does
not retain reproduction rights for these images individually or maintain a file of addresses for
sources.
v3.1
Dedicated to the pioneers of South American paleozoology
Georges Cuvier
Charles Darwin
Alfred Russel Wallace
Peter Wilhelm Lund
Florentino and Carlos Ameghino
John Bell Hatcher
William Berryman Scott
George Gaylord Simpson
José Bonaparte
Carlos de Paula Couto
Rosendo Pascual
without whom this story would never be known
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
INTRODUCTION:
The Lost World
1.
The Island Continent
2.
Tyrant Lizard Kings
3.
Giants among Giants
4.
Demise of the Dinosaurs
5.
Living Dinosaurs
6.
Land of the Reptilian Monsters
7.
The Old Timers I: Killer Opossums
8.
The Old Timers II: Pseudo-Elephants, Pseudo-Hippos, and
Pseudo-Horses
9.
The Old Timers III: The Slow Folk
10.
The Castaways
11.
Invasion!
12.
Where Have All the Mammals Gone?
EPILOGUE:
The Sixth Extinction
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Photo Insert
Figure 0.1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories and
The Lost World.
INTRODUCTION
The Lost World
The Lost World was a work of fiction by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the
author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but it was based on the
newly made discovery of actual isolated plateaus in the Amazonian
jungles of South America inhabited by unique creatures unknown to
science. Not even Doyle could have imagined the extinct gigantic
creatures that really did exist in the prehistoric past of South
America.
Sherlock Holmes just wouldn’t die.
His creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (figure 0.1), had written the first
short story about the legendary detective back in 1886. By 1893, he had
written twenty-four short stories and two novels. He was tired of the
task of churning out several Holmes stories a year for Strand Magazine.
Like many a writer with one very successful book series, Conan Doyle
was afraid of being typecast as the author of Sherlock Holmes and
nothing else. He wanted to work on historical fiction instead. In
November 1891, he had written to his mother, “I think of slaying
Holmes … and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from
better things.” His mother wrote back, “You won’t! You can’t! You
mustn’t!” But in 1893, he published “The Final Problem,” in which
Holmes and his nemesis, Dr. Moriarty, fight to the death at Reichenbach
Falls and Holmes falls to his doom—or so it appears.
When readers cried out for more Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan
Doyle realized that he had underestimated the popularity of his most
famous character. In addition, his other writings did not sell very well.
After an eight-year hiatus, he relented and wrote “The Hound of the
Baskervilles,” the most famous Holmes story ever. In 1903, Conan Doyle
brought the short stories back again with “The Adventure of the Empty
House.” In this story, Holmes reveals that he escaped the fall that killed
Moriarty but had to remain in hiding for a year to flush out his
henchman, Colonel Sebastian Moran, whom Holmes caught trying to
assassinate him. Conan Doyle then dutifully wrote thirty-two more
Sherlock Holmes stories and one more novel until 1927, three years
before his death at age seventy-one, never again daring to alienate his
loyal readers.
In 1911, though, Conan Doyle got an inspiration for a story and a
character that might compete for popularity with Sherlock Holmes. He
heard a lecture on February 11 at the Royal Geographical Society about
the Huanchaca Plateau in Bolivia given by a good friend of his, the
noted explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett. Fawcett was famous for his
perilous expeditions in South America, where he nearly starved to death
more than once. Many of the fearless explorers featured in the comic
books and adventure movies of the 1950s were based on Fawcett. These,
in turn, may have been the inspiration for popular modern movie
characters such as Allan Quatermain and Indiana Jones.
As Fawcett wrote in his posthumous memoirs,
Monsters from the dawn of man’s existence might still roam these
heights unchallenged, imprisoned and protected by unscalable cliffs.
So thought Conan Doyle when later in London I spoke of these hills
and showed photographs of them. He mentioned an idea for a novel
on Central South America and asked for information, which I told him
I should be glad to supply. The fruit of it was his Lost World in 1912,
appearing as a serial in the Strand Magazine, and subsequently in the
form of a book that achieved widespread popularity.
Conan Doyle was influenced not only by Fawcett’s discoveries but also
by the first blooming of “dinomania.” Although fragmentary dinosaur
fossils had been found in England as early as 1824, they were too
incomplete to build a complete skeleton. Except for some large lizardlike
models sculpted by Waterhouse Hawkins for the Great Exhibition of
1851, there were few reconstructions or images of dinosaurs available
for public consumption, since the fossils were too piecemeal. Most of
them were just a few bones, not enough to even to grasp their
enormousness. So far, dinosaurs had still not made much of a dent in the