Pictures of Catastrophe
Animal Deathscapes and the Early Development of Taphonomy through Photography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3924952 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ana María Gómez López (Thales (Australia), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Pages | 143-168 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Osiris (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0369-7827 • E-ISSN: 1933-8287 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/735521 |
| OpenAlex | W4411229576 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 41 |
In 1927, German paleontologist Johannes Weigelt published dozens of photographs featuring decomposing animals that he encountered during geological fieldwork along the US Gulf Coast. Many of these livestock and wildlife species died because of extreme weather conditions, their remains marooned in coastal beaches, riverbanks, and mudflats. Weigelt’s findings led him to assert that understanding decay and burial in contemporary biological organisms was essential for tracing fossil formation, a proposition that grounds the field now known as taphonomy. This article examines animal mobility in the context of Texas’s oil and cattle industry, analyzing how Weigelt’s images of carcasses and their parts converge in the long aftermaths of ecological catastrophes of both natural and anthropogenic origin, as well as the inseparability of the exploitation and extraction of humans, nonhuman animals, and geological resources
History · History of Science and Natural History · Psychology
Living Oil
Beyond Geography, Past Time
Rereading the Fossil Record
Plantation
Plantation Futures
A Theory of Animation
The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Texas Longhorn
All things bleak and bare beneath a brazen sky
The Conquest of the Karankawas and the Tonkawas, 1821-1859
Hunting with the Camera
Assembling the Dinosaur
The 20th-Century Commercial Mining of Northern Plains Bison Kills
The Destruction of the Bison
There Will Be Birds
Cowboys, Scientists, and Fossils
The Perfect Fence
Creeping, Drinking, Dying
Genres of Enslavement
The Origin of Anglo-American Cattle Ranching in Texas
The Fossil and the Photograph
On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place
Becoming Stone
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |