The article this is based on this paper:
Lukas Rieppel (2015)
Prospecting for dinosaurs on the mining frontier: The value of information in America’s Gilded Age.
Social Studies of Science 45 (2): 161-186
doi: 10.1177/0306312715570650
Free pdf:
How much is a dinosaur worth? This essay offers an account of the way vertebrate fossils were priced in late 19th-century America to explore the process by which monetary values are established in science. Examining a long and drawn-out negotiation over the sale of an unusually rich dinosaur quarry in Wyoming, I argue that, on their own, abstract market principles did not suffice to mediate between supply and demand. Rather, people haggling over the price of dinosaur bones looked to social norms from the mineral industry for cues on how to value these rare and unusual objects, adopting a set of negotiation tactics that exploited asymmetries in the distribution of scarce information to secure the better end of the deal. On the mining frontier in America’s Gilded Age, dinosaurs were thus valued in much the same way as any other scarce natural resource one could dig out of the ground, including gold, silver, and coal.
Marine reptiles in French magazine Espèces
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Unfortunately, the free subscription does NOT include the special issues it appears, so I'm not sure how to access the contents except by buying the issue on a newsstand in France. Anyway, the contents look interesting:
Les mers au Mésozoïque [Seas of the Mesozoic]