'Curious Footprints': New Book by Nancy Pick and Frank Ward About Amherst College's Dinosaur Tracks.

(From AScribe)

AMHERST, Mass. -- Few people realize that Amherst College holds the world's largest collection of dinosaur tracks. A new book explores how an evangelical minister named Edward Hitchcock assembled that collection in the mid-1800s, while arguing that the tracks were made not by dinosaurs but by gigantic ancient birds. "Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks and Other Natural History Treasures at Amherst College" ($20, paper, 121 pp., Amherst College Press, Amherst, Mass. 2006) combines a charming biographical sketch of Hitchcock, written by Nancy Pick, with Frank Ward's stunning color photographs of the college's broader natural …