Date Born/ Age:Let’s just say that you can see me in the movie “Woodstock,” under a leaky umbrella giving the peace sign.

Length:UNKNOWN

Weight: UNKNOWN

Favorite Food: fresh rainbow trout 

Family: Husband Josh and two ferrets, Blanche and Stella

Genus:UNKNOWN

Species: UNKNOWN

Place of Origin: Little Egypt, Southern Illinois

Habitat: New Jersey and Montana

Favorite Movie: The Bear

Favorite TV Show: Hopalong Cassidy then, West Wing now

Favorite Dinosaur: Protoceratops

Favorite Sport: ferret-legging

Exercise: Hiking 

Hobbies: Collecting Turok, Son of Stone comix 

Distinguishing Features: migratory 

Students? Pay Attention! Be sure to check out that is to say, investigate, (humph), certain other useful pieces of terminology at the 7V-WOW Archives.

Adrienne Mayor with Protoceratops (aka “the Griffin”). The photo was taken at the notorious fossil show in Tucson.

This is a griffin or a griffon or a gryphon depending upon how you want to spell it. Notice any resemblance to a certain dino fossil pictured prominently at the right. And, no, we don't mean the lady with the glasses. Click here or above for the full-sized image which is really below.

I’m a folkorist who studies ancient legends about natural history. In the 1980s, I was in Greece and Turkey doing archaeological work. Most people picture marble ruins or vase paintings when they think of ancient Greece. But the land of Homer and Hercules also holds the huge bones of Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene mastodons, mammoths, and other extinct mammals. On the island of Samos (off the coast of Turkey), I saw some big fossil femurs and shoulderblades that modern farmers had plowed up in their fields. It struck me that people in ancient times would have come across similar bones. How did people who lived thousands of years ago explain the colossal fossils of creatures that lived millions of years ago? 

I decided to find out what ordinary humans thought about the big skeletons they found all around the Mediterranean Sea. By reading about 100 different Greek and Roman descriptions of discoveries of “giant bones,” and examining ancient vase paintings and talking with classical archaeologists, I learned that people in antiquity collected, measured, and even displayed huge fossils. And they made up stories about the immense bones: They thought they were the remains of the one-eyed Cyclops, Giants, Griffins, Monsters, Dragons, and even mighty heroes of myth. Athens and Sparta actually started an ancient Bone Rush, searching out impressive fossils for their temples. Greeks and Romans found enormous bones in Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco. Ancient travelers brought back tales of fossil monsters from the Gobi Desert and the slopes of the Himalayas in India. 
 
 

That’s an x-ray of Adrienne Mayor on the left, standing next to the skeleton of a monstrous giant from Greek mythology, right. Guess what gave the ancient Greeks the idea that bizarre, giant creatures once populated their lands?

 All the fascinating stories about the bones of dinosaurs, chalicotheres, dinotheres, mastodons, giant giraffes, and mammoths are gathered in my book, The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times. I’ve presented my research at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and most recently at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, NY. 

So ask me about the true identity the dreadful Monster of Troy, the fearsome Cyclops, the Dragons of India with gems sparkling in their skulls, the gold-guarding Griffins of Scythia, the fisherman who caught the huge shoulderblade of a mythical hero Pelops in his net, the supersized bones of the great warriors of the Trojan War, and the world’s first Museum of Monster Bones in ancient Rome!

Adrienne Mayor - List of Publications
Fossil Myths
Visit Echo Pausanias, a vase painter in Ancient Athens
Some Native American fossil tales

Books by Adrienne Mayor

Look for these books at your Public Library!

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NON-FICTION

The First Fossil Hunters : Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times 
                  by Adrienne Mayor, Peter Dodson (Foreword) 
                                  List Price: $35.00
                                  Our Price: $24.50
                                  You Save: $10.50 (30%)
                     Hardcover - 344 pages (May 2000) 
                     Princeton Univ Pr; ISBN: 0691058636