DISCOVERING DOROTHEA: THE LIFE OF THE PIONEERING FOSSIL HUNTER, DOROTHEA BATE

"In 1898, a 19-year-old girl marched in the Natural History Museum in South Kensington and demanded a job. At the time, no women were employed there as scientists, but for the determined Dorothea Bate this was the first step in an extraordinary career as a pioneering explorer and fossil-hunter and the beginning of an association with the Museum that was to last for more than fifty years." "As a young woman in the early 1900's, she explored the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Crete and the little-known Majorca and Menorca, braving parental opposition and considerable physical hardship and danger. In remote caves in mountains and sea-battered cliffs, she discovered, against enormous odds, the fossil evidence of unique species of extinct fauna, previously unknown to science, including dwarf elephants and hippos, giant dormice and a strange, small, goat-like antelope.^ A woman of immense charm, wit and intelligence, she revelled in the social life of British-ruled Cyprus, playing croquet on the lawns of Government House and dancing with sailors on its asphalt tennis courts. In Crete she watched as archaeologists revealed the glories of the Minoan civilisation. Thirty years later in Palestine, she excavated against a background of violence and the growing threat of war." "Her remarkable career brought her into contact with many of the greatest archaeologists and palaeontologists of the twentieth century, among them Sir Arthur Evans, Louis and Mary Leakey and Agatha Christie's husband, Sir Max Mallowan. Internationally respected as an outstanding paleontologist during her lifetime, Dorethea was largely forgotten after her death. Now, working from unpublished letters, papers and work diaries and retracing her steps, Karolyn Shindler has rediscovered Dorothea's life.^ This biography reveals not only a unique and indomitable women, but also the splendid personalities who worked behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum and in the expanding world of archaeology in the first half of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.