United States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, Volume VII. Odontornithes: A Monograph on the Extinct Toothed Birds of North America
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880.
First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Quarto, pp. xv, 201 + 34 plates, each with a facing page of explanatory text. Additional woodcut illustrations in the text. Original green cloth binding, author's compliments slip tipped in at the front free endpaper, presenting the book to Dale College Museum in New Haven, Connecticut. Light scattered foxing to preliminary pages and to plates, main body of text very clean, binding tight. "Marsh was one of the earliest supporters of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. His discovery of birds that had teeth and the complete sequence of American fossil horses helped to answer evolutionary questions and earned him the praise of Darwin and biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. His research on fossil vertebrates was published in more than 270 publications in which he described 496 species, 225 genera, 64 families, 8 suborders, 19 orders, and 1 subclass....[His] most enduring legacy is the collections he acquired for the U.S. Geological Survey during his ten years as the government’s first vertebrate paleontologist. The annual appropriation for this position enabled him to employ field collectors, laboratory preparation staff, artists, and other assistants at the Peabody Museum at Yale, resulting in a collection of great quantity and quality" (American National Biography). Odontornithes was his first major work and brought him widespread recognition in the scientific community.
Item #22715
Price: $250.00