Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
| Online Publication Date: 05 Nov 2007
The Trilobite Affair of James Hall and James Dwight Dana (1837-1847)
The Trilobite Affair of James Hall and James Dwight Dana (1837-1847)
Page Range: 9 – 12
James Hall's 1838 paper on two species of the trilohite Paradoxides in the American Journal of Science, the first paper Hall published in a scientific journal and the first to deal with fossils, was conceived and written by James Dwight Dana. The sequence of events was uncovered by M. L. Prendergast (1978) in an unpublished thesis. The Trilobite Affair, as it was dubbed by Dana, created problems for both participants and it may have been a source of discord 20 years later as Hall and Dana clashed over theories of mountain building. John Clarke and Rudolf Ruedemann, Hall's successors, attempted to exonerate their mentor by shifting the entire blame for the affair to Dana.
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