‘House of Lost Worlds’ opens vaults of renowned natural history museum
Yale’s Peabody played central role in early dinosaur discoveries
House of Lost Worlds
Richard Conniff
Yale Univ., $35
A century and a half ago, a young paleontologist named Othniel Charles Marsh persuaded his uncle, philanthropist George Peabody, to give Yale University $150,000 for a museum of natural history. And so Yale’s Peabody Museum was born, an institution that has repeatedly upended how people understand Earth’s past. In House of Lost Worlds, Richard Conniff tells the story of the Peabody through the curious characters connected to it.