{"id":49706,"date":"2018-11-07T16:30:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T22:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=49706"},"modified":"2018-11-07T16:17:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T22:17:00","slug":"tuesday-november-13-catch-the-dinosaur-artist-author-paige-williams-at-off-square-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/tuesday-november-13-catch-the-dinosaur-artist-author-paige-williams-at-off-square-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday, November 13 Catch “The Dinosaur Artist” Author Paige Williams at Off Square Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Yorker<\/i>\u00a0magazine staff writer Paige Williams explores the riveting and perilous world of fossil collectors in this “tremendous” true tale of one Florida man’s attempt to sell a dinosaur skeleton from Mongolia\u2014”a triumphant book” (Publishers Weekly<\/i>) that is “steeped in natural history, human nature, commerce, crime, science, and politics” (Rebecca Skloot).<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2012, a New York auction catalogue boasted an unusual offering: “a superb Tyrannosaurus<\/strong> skeleton.” In fact, Lot 49135 consisted of a nearly complete\u00a0T. bataar<\/i>, a close cousin to the most famous animal that ever lived. The fossils now on display in a Manhattan event space had been unearthed in Mongolia, more than 6,000 miles away. At eight-feet high and 24 feet long, the specimen was spectacular, and when the gavel sounded the winning bid was over $1 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Image via DEVIANTART<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eric Prokopi<\/strong>, a thirty-eight-year-old Floridian, was the man who had brought this extraordinary skeleton to market. A onetime swimmer who spent his teenage years diving for shark teeth, Prokopi’s singular obsession with fossils fueled a thriving business hunting, preparing, and selling specimens, to clients ranging from natural history museums to avid private collectors like actor Leonardo DiCaprio<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there was a problem. This time, facing financial strain, had Prokopi gone too far? As the\u00a0T. bataar<\/i>\u00a0went to auction, a network of paleontologists alerted the government of Mongolia to the eye-catching lot. As an international custody battle ensued, Prokopi watched as his own world unraveled.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the tradition of\u00a0The Orchid Thief<\/i>,\u00a0The Dinosaur Artist<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0is a stunning work of narrative journalism about humans’ relationship with natural history and a seemingly intractable conflict between science and commerce. A story that stretches from Florida’s Land O’ Lakes to the Gobi Desert,\u00a0The Dinosaur Artist<\/i>\u00a0illuminates the history of fossil collecting\u2014a murky, sometimes risky business, populated by eccentrics and obsessives, where the lines between poacher and hunter, collector and smuggler, enthusiast and opportunist, can easily blur.<\/span><\/p>\n

In her first book, Paige Williams has given readers an irresistible story that spans continents, cultures, and millennia as she examines the question of who, ultimately, owns the past.<\/span><\/p>\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/span>
\nPaige Williams is a staff writer at\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0and a Mississippi<\/strong> native. A National Magazine Award<\/strong> winner for feature writing, she has had her journalism anthologized in various volumes of the Best American series, including The Best American Magazine Writing<\/strong><\/em> and The Best American Crime Writing<\/strong><\/em>. She is the Laventhol\/Newsday Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and has taught at schools including the University of Mississippi, New York University, the Missouri School of Journalism, and, at M.I.T., in the Knight Science Journalism program. Williams has been a fellow of The MacDowell Colony and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. At\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>, she has written about suburban politics in Detroit, the death penalty in Alabama, paleoanthropology in South Africa, and the theft of cultural palimony from the Tlingit peoples of Alaska.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Yorker\u00a0magazine staff writer Paige Williams explores the riveting and perilous world of fossil collectors in this “tremendous”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":49804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2239,1],"tags":[13491,5,12831,13488,13490,13492,13489],"class_list":["post-49706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-literary-events","category-uncategorized","tag-eric-prokopi","tag-mississippi","tag-new-yorker","tag-paige-williams","tag-t-bataar","tag-the-dinosaur-artist","tag-tyrannosaurus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/2018-11-08-Dinosaur-Artist.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}