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

I remember back in 2007 when the American Museum of Natural History in NYC premiered a show called “Mythic Creatures”. It made a fair amount of press and with good reason. It’s not every day you see full-scale models of mythical creatures presented in a serious museum setting. The show got some nice......more

Really neat story about Adrienne Mayor's search for the origins of the griffin legend and the ways she showed that Greeks and other ancient people were simply trying to explain their natural surroundings with the tools they had available (as opposed to just making up fantasies). Good companion to a......more

Another engaging title by Marc Aronson. I love the idea of a girl taking years to take a closer look at things that she is curious about--and how Aronson takes us back to her grandfather's influence on her world view before bringing in the research topic. This will be great paired with Monsters & Le......more

This was a great though provoking book, asking "what if the mythology of Greece were based on tangible evidence?", and following the quest of Mayor to discover the origin of the Griffin legend in particular. With some other legends tosses in, this was an enjoyable, succinct read.......more

Now it’s stuck in my head. Whenever I read or hear about a griffin, I’ll be wondering if it was simply an ancient ‘paleontologist’s’ name for a long-dead beast now classified as a dinosaur. It’s really a fascinating theory and, as presented in this book, quite convincing. But then I haven’t heard a......more