Plaster cast publishing in nineteenth-century paleontology

Abstract

This article uses the example of Hesperornis regalis, an ancient toothed bird discovered in Kansas during the 1870s, to discuss a practice that became extremely widespread in late-nineteenth-century paleontology: the use of plaster cast replicas to circulate especially noteworthy discoveries. Building upon a growing literature at the intersection of book history and the history of science, I argue that paleontologists developed plaster casts as a compromise medium that combined some features of print with others from original natural history specimens. For example, because plaster casts were mechanical reproductions, they could be fabricated in fairly large numbers at a relatively modest price. This allowed them to circulate more readily than original fossils. At the same time, however, paleontologists treated casts as a material trace of prehistory, much like an original fossil itself. As a result, they were seen as especially authoritative and trustworthy objects of knowledge. Insofar as they combined features of print and prehistory, I argue that casts functioned as a genuine mode of publication in late-nineteenth-century paleontology, but one that foregrounded its own materiality.