Fossil Dealers, the Practices of Comparative Anatomy, and British Diplomacy in Latin America, 1820-1840

PODGORNY IRINA

British Journal for the History of Science

Cambridge University Press

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2012 p. 1 - 28

0007-0874

This paper traces the trade routes of South American fossil mammal bones in the 1830s, thus elaborating both local and intercontinental networks that ascribed new meanings to objects with little intrinsic value. It analyzes the role of British consuls, natural history dealers, administrative instructions, and naturalists, who took the bones from the garbage pits of ranches outside of Buenos Aires and delivered them into the hands of anatomists. For several years, the European debates on the anatomy of Megatherium were shaped by the shipping to London of a small living mammal and the ideas and evidence received from Montevideo on the existence of fossil bony armours. These debates culminated late in 1838 in the creation of the extinct genus Glyptodon by Richard Owen as a result of the exchange of letters, objects, depictions, and a series of contingent events. Based on primary sources and South American scholarship, this paper aims to contribute to the current debates among historians of science about the mobility of knowledge, as well as presenting the condition that made Charles Darwin?s work possible.