EVERY HIDDEN THING WAS INSPIRED, IN PART, by two pioneering American paleontologists, Edward Drinkwater Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Their rivalry in the late nineteenth century was famous, and has been referred to as the “Bone Wars,” during which each scientist tried to outdo, undermine, and even destroy the reputation of the other. Nonetheless, between them they found and named over a hundred new species of dinosaurs—though today, a much smaller number of them are considered valid.
Researching this book was fascinating, and I’m very grateful to Donald Henderson, Curator of Dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum; Donald Brinkman, Director of Preservation and Research; and Dennis Braman, a Research Scientist in Palynology, for allowing me to tag along with them during a dig at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. They were generous with their time, and patient in answering my many questions.
Two books in particular were invaluable to me in researching Cope and Marsh, and the history of American paleontology. The first was The Gilded Dinosaur by Mark Jaffe, an enthralling history of the fossil war between Cope and Marsh, and a great primer in the evolution of American science. The second book was The Life of a Fossil Hunter by Charles H. Sternberg. Sternberg was largely self-taught, and became an indispensable fossil hunter for Cope, before striking out as an independent collector. In 1912 Sternberg moved to Canada with his three sons and they prospected for dinosaurs in Alberta for decades.
The period in which my book is set was incredibly eventful not just scientifically, but politically and socially as well. The Civil War had ended just years before; the Union Pacific Railway had just bound the nation coast to coast, and American expansion was pushing farther west, displacing the Plains Indians, breaking territorial treaties and promises, and pursuing a policy whose aim was to confine the Indians to ever smaller and poorly maintained Reserves, while deliberately exterminating their traditional food source, the bison. Black Elk Speaks, as told through John G. Neihardt, helped give me an insight into this period of American Indian history, and the culture of the Lakota Sioux. Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian was an excellent overview of the collision between First Nations people and white European settlers. Since my story contains several Lakota and Pawnee characters, it was very important to me that my depictions of them be as accurate as possible—so I am very grateful to Brandy Tuttle, a member of the Lakota people, for agreeing to read and comment on the manuscript before its publication.
Finally I’d like to thank my editors, Justin Chanda, Hadley Dyer, and Bella Pearson, who, as always, helped me to write a much better book.