Tooth and Claw: The Dinosaur Wars by Deborah Noyes

 

I got quite lucky this month in that the stars aligned and I was assigned to read a young adult novel for one of my master's classes. I decided to go with nonfiction for a change. I ordered a whole slew of middle grades nonfiction for my school earlier this year and was itching to try out some of the titles. Tooth and Claw: The Dinosaur Wars by Deborah Noyes was one of the books at the top of my list, so that was what I settled on.

The text is set in the second half of the nineteenth century and follows two scientists at the forefront of a new field called paleontology, the study of early life through bones and fossils. Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh quickly made names for themselves in this new science as they discovered and classified all sorts of prehistoric animal fossils from all over the United States, including dinosaurs. They became engaged in a fierce rivalry to lay claim to dig sites and bones in an effort to become the foremost experts in their field. Their constant clashes with each other came to be known as the "Dinosaur Wars" and they both engaged in lying, spying, stealing, destruction, and more than a little sloppy work in their pursuit of greatness. The novel follows their careers from beginning to end as they fight to be the ones to find more, to publish more, and to make a greater mark on science.

I thought this novel was great, and very readable for its intended audience of middle school students. The text itself was short, coming in at just 151 pages and the chapters within it were short as well, which kept the action moving at a good pace. Sprinkled throughout were lots of pictures, maps, and sidebars containing additional information to give background knowledge and context to the story. It kept my interest all the way through and Noyes' mildly funny and sarcastic writing style managed to get the historical information across while remaining entertaining. She did a nice job of portraying a time in the past where people were just finding out about the existence of prehistoric animals and copious amounts of fossils were laying right under the surface of the ground, waiting to be uncovered. It was a very well written exploration of a part of history that most people probably don't know much about.

One aspect of the story that I thought was very interesting was the emergence of a clear theme. You don't always see that with a nonfiction text, but in this case, there was a message to take away from the lives of Cope and Marsh. Over time, their rivalry become so fierce that it became more important than the science they were studying. Both became so eager to best the other that they rushed to classify specimens and publish papers. They acquired more fossils than they could study purely in an effort to prevent each other from obtaining them. They even took to destroying dig sites behind themselves as they moved to new areas, to stop each other from finding anything inadvertently left behind. Between these two men, hundreds of prehistoric animals were discovered, but people mostly remember them now for the Dinosaur Wars and how vicious they were to each other. As Noyes points out in the conclusion of the text, had these two worked together, science would have benefited much, much more. These two men caused several inaccuracies to be present in the fossil record, some of which took many years to sort out. Remember the confusion about Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus, and whether they were actually the same animal or not? That came about from these two. There is definitely a message here that readers can take away about the importance of teamwork and the damaging effects of ego. Noyes told the story of these men in a way that allowed this underlying idea to come through, which is a nice takeaway for younger readers to add to the historical information they will learn. 

Overall, I thought that Tooth and Claw: The Dinosaur Wars was a worthy read about a very interesting topic. Noyes delivers a lot of historical information in an engaging way and provides plenty of support throughout the text to help middle grades readers place the events she is describing into context. Anyone interested in science or dinosaurs would probably find a lot to like in this novel. I was happy to get a chance to pick it up.

2023 Reading Challenges Tally:

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 3/24

Clear the Shelves 2023: 1/24