While at the IAS for the 2019-20 academic year, anthropologist Elana Shever will be writing Finding Our Beasts: Encountering Dinosaurs and Science in the American West. This book-length ethnography explores paleontological science, education and entertainment at public parks, museums, research facilities and tourist sites. The book examines how people’s encounters with prehistoric creatures incite them to reconsider their own humanity and animality. This rethinking occurs, for instance, when someone who regards dinosaurs as exotic beasts holds an Edmontosaurus vertebra the same shape as their own and recognizes commonalities in their bodies. Through such experiences, people question the dichotomies among humans, animals and things inherited from the European tradition. Her central claim is that the meanings and values of humanity, animality and prehistory are not determined by people alone, but are created through intimate and power-laden relations among humans and animal-objects, such as dinosaurs.