Could Griffins have been real? When Adrienne Mayor carefully read the ancient Greek and Roman descriptions, this mythic hybrid of a lion and an eagle sounded like something people had actually seen. What could explain that evidence? After a decade of hunting through myths, poring over old maps, and tracing the discoveries of modern dinosaur hunters, she found the answer: awesome dinosaur fossils observed by ancient gold-hunters in the Gobi desert. Here is the story of one insightful, curious, and determined woman who solved the mystery of the Griffin, and invented a new science. Now she and others travel the world matching myths and fossils.---from the publisher
48 pages 9781426311086 Ages 10-14
Keywords: archaeology, mythology, fossils, dinosaurs, narrative nonfiction, women, mystery, science, 10 year old, 11 year old, 12 year old, 13 year old, 14 year old
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Growing up in South Dakota, Adrienne Mayor was the quiet girl who never raised her hand in class. Instead, she loved to wander the prairie seeking wonders and filling her mind with stories.
When she found herself in Athens, Greece, she plunged into reading the original versions of ancient myths--especially descriptions of the fabled griffin. As she read, an exciting idea took shape in her mind. Scholars had long treated accounts of the griffin as made-up fantasies. But to Mayor, they seemed to describe something ancient people had actually seen. What could that have been?
Mayor's quest to solve that mystery led her from books to ruined temples, from museums to the graves of great tattooed warriors. Finally, after poring over formerly top secret maps, she located the forbidding desert where nomadic gold hunters once entered the lair of the griffin--and she came face-to-face with her quarry.
Here is the story of Mayor's detective work, which has helped create a new science in which experts match myths and fossils and begin to see the world through our ancestors' eyes. ---from the publisher
