Readers unfamiliar with this period of American history may be interested to know that Professors Marsh and Cope were real people, their rivalry and antagonism depicted here without exaggeration—in fact, it has been toned down, since the nineteenth century promoted a degree of ad hominem excess that is hard to believe now.
Cope did go to the Montana badlands in 1876, and discovered the teeth of Brontosaurus, essentially as recounted here.*
The antagonism between Cope and Marsh that played out over ten years is compressed here into a single summer, with some changes. Thus, it was Marsh who made the false skull for Cope to find, and so on. However, it is true that on many occasions the workers of Cope and Marsh fired on one another—with much more serious intent than suggested here.
The character of William Johnson is entirely fictitious. I would not read this novel as history. For history, read Charles Sternberg’s detailed account of Cope’s trip to the Montana badlands in The Life of a Fossil Hunter.
I am indebted to E. H. Colbert, the eminent paleontologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, for first bringing the story of Marsh and Cope to my attention; in his kind correspondence he suggested a novel about them; he also provided me with my first leads in his books.
Finally, readers who inspect photographic books, as I have done, should be extremely careful about the captions. There has emerged a new breed of photo book in which authentic pictures of the West are accompanied by bleak, elegiac prose. The captions may seem to fit the pictures, but they do not fit the facts—this sad, melancholy attitude is a complete anachronism. Towns such as Deadwood may look depressing to us now, but they were exciting places then, and the people who inhabited them were excited to be there. Too often, the people who write captions to photographs indulge their own uninformed fantasies about the pictures and what they mean.
All the events of 1876 occurred as reported here, except that Marsh did not lead a party of students west that year (he had gone every year for the previous six, but remained in New Haven in 1876 to meet the English biologist T. H. Huxley); that all of Cope’s bones traveled safely on the Missouri steamer, and no one continued on to Deadwood; and that Robert Louis Stevenson did not go west until 1879. The descriptions of the Indian Wars are accurate, sadly so, and from a vantage of some hundred-plus years later, it seems safe to say that the American West described in these pages, like the world of the dinosaurs long before, was soon to be forever lost.
Afterword
Michael’s dedication to his craft was endless: over the course of his forty-plus-year career, he wrote thirty-two books; his work inspired many films, and as a director, screenwriter, and producer himself, he created iconic movies and television programs. Not only was he always working on his next project, he was always working on his “next projects.” Michael was constantly reading, clipping interesting articles, amassing research for new work by looking to the past, observing the present, and thinking about our future. He loved to tell stories that blurred the lines between facts and what-if scenarios. You always came out of a Crichton novel, film, or television event smarter and wanting more. Because his work was so densely researched, you couldn’t help but believe that, yes, perhaps dinosaurs could be brought back to life through DNA found in a well-preserved mosquito or that nanobots could operate intelligently and independently and wreak havoc on their human creators and the environment.
His work is as relevant and engaging as ever, as demonstrated by the gigantic success of the Jurassic Park franchise, and in HBO’s reimagining of his classic film Westworld.
Honoring Michael’s legacy has been my mission ever since he passed away. Through the creation of his archives, I quickly realized that it was possible to trace the birth of Dragon Teeth to a 1974 letter to the curator of vertebrate paleontology of the American Museum of Natural History. After reading the manuscript, I could only describe Dragon Teeth as “pure Crichton.” It has Michael’s voice, and his love of history, research, and science all dynamically woven into this epic tale. Nearly forty years after Michael first hatched the idea for a novel about the excitement and the dangers of early paleontology, the story feels as fresh and fun today as it was to him then. Dragon Teeth was a very important book for Michael—it was a forerunner of his “other dinosaur story.” Its publication is a wonderful way to introduce Michael to new generations of readers around the world and is an absolute treat for longtime Crichton fans everywhere.
Publishing Dragon Teeth has been a labor of love, and I want to thank the following people for their assistance in this endeavor: my creative partner, Laurent Bouzereau; Jonathan Burnham, Jennifer Barth, and the team at Harper; Jennifer Joel and Sloan Harris of ICM Partners; the remarkable team at the Michael Crichton Archives; Michael S. Sherman and Page Jenkins; and, of course, our beloved son, John Michael Crichton (Jr.).
—Sherri Crichton
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———. “The Story of a Pioneer ‘Bone-Setter.’” Natural History (March 1938): 224–27.
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———. Men and Dinosaurs: The Search in Field and Laboratory. New York: Dutton, 1968.
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