Jill at the Goblin Hollow fossil bed in Logan County, Kansas. Photo by Bob Aicher

Jill Hunting’s book For Want of Wings: A Bird with Teeth and a Dinosaur in the Family is the story of Thomas H. Russell’s discovery of an 83-million-year-old fossil and her visits to the canyon where he found it. On her first visit there she takes her then–26-year-old daughter, May Boeve, with her. When the story opens, Jill and May are both at a turning point. The book includes the single most complete account of the 1872 Yale College Scientific Expedition into the American West.

Praise for For Want of Wings

Partly a rousing adventure in pursuit of scientific discovery, partly a series of intimate ruminations on self and history, For Want of Wings charms the reader to explore unexpected byways of knowledge as it crisscrosses the United States through time and space. —Nancy F. Cott, Jonathan Trumbull Research Professor of American History at Harvard University and author of Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home between the Wars

Jill Hunting has given us the story of a beautiful, intimate, and unforgettable journey that shows how ineffably the past is woven into the present, how our ancestors’ complicated lives shape our own, and what is gained when we come face to face with our history. —Lynn Novick, documentary filmmaker and collaborator, with Ken Burns, on Hemingway, The Vietnam War, Baseball, and The Civil War

In this engrossing memoir, Jill Hunting has woven her own family’s past into the weft and the warp of American history. This rich tapestry truly contains multitudes, ranging from the founding [by her direct antecedent William Huntington Russell] of Skull and Bones at Yale University to the discovery of toothed birds in western Kansas, from antebellum debates over the abolition of slavery to the forced relocation of indigenous tribes on the Great Plains. It is emotionally complex and beautifully told, an absolute pleasure to read. —Lukas Rieppel, Associate Professor of History, Brown University and author of Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle

Jill Hunting is a great storyteller and this is a truly great story. As she notes, Hesperornis is perhaps the least famous of the most important fossils ever discovered. Her book should change that. As Darwin emphasized, an intermediate form like Hesperornis helps us understand how evolution works in ways that are fundamental to understanding both the past and future of our planet. —David K. Skelly, Frank R. Oastler Professor of Ecology, Yale University School of the Environment and Director, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History

Jill Hunting’s For Want of Wings follows a delightfully discursive and personal path across important American history, tracking the footsteps of ancestors whose adventures in scientific discovery and political change resonate to this day. I avidly followed, feeling as enriched as did Jill and her daughter, May, out on the Great Plains and the Rockies. This is a warm and touching story showing the simultaneity of past and present—just my kind of book. —David Haward Bain, author of Empire Express and The Old Iron Road

This book is a fascinating glimpse into the science of paleontology. It combines memoir, autobiography, biography, speculation, and poetry into a coherent whole. … Hunting’s approach of soft-focus realism permits a foray into some of her great-grandfather’s encounters with abolitionist John Brown, descriptions of 19th century medical practices, stunning information about Yale University, competition among paleontologists, and contemporary environmental movements. Yet all these issues and persons manage to relate to the curious little bird-dinosaur at the heart of her book. … For Want of Wings is complex, with a refreshingly varied path to narrative history. —Charlotte Hinger, Roundup magazine, Western Writers of America

Part history of science and part memoir, Jill Hunting’s book is a wide-flying exploration of her great-grandfather Thomas Hubbard Russell’s discovery, in western Kansas, of a rare fossil bird with a beak full of teeth. … Lovers of great storytelling will certainly appreciate the way Hunting skillfully articulates so many disjointed fragments: the abolitionist John Brown; the founding of Yale’s most notorious secret society, Skull and Bones; lemonade-hawking triplets; a mansplaining cyclist; and much more besides, into a single, very readable narrative about a fossil bird with runty wings. … The author’s best and most creative inferences include beautiful details about a soldier’s life on the bleak Kansas plain in the 1870s, including guide Edward Lane’s penchant for profanity; design flaws of the US Army-issued Sibley tent; expedition member Benjamin Hoppin’s night spent lost on the prairie; and speculations about her great-grandfather’s personality based on a minute examination of his photograph by an expert portraitist. The author naturally wants to tell the reader something about Russell’s reaction when he found his spectacular fossil, but, unfortunately, the discoverer left no record. Therefore, she cleverly substitutes a vivid, first-hand account of George F. Sternberg’s discovery of a beautiful duck-billed dinosaur skeleton covered with skin impressions. Hunting makes it easy to imagine that Russell was every bit as excited as Sternberg was. … For Want of Wings is an entertaining read that makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on history of American paleontology. —Paul D. Brinkman, Archives of Natural History, October 2022, issue 49.2.

October 27, 2022, [marked] the sesquicentennial of the discovery of one of the Peabody Museum’s most significant specimens: a fossilized partial skeleton, over three feet tall, of the ancient toothed bird Hesperornis regalis. It was discovered on October 27, 1872, by Thomas Russell (1872PhB, 1875MD) in the 85-million-year-old chalk beds of Kansas. … As for Thomas Russell, he would be proud to know that his great-granddaughter, Jill Hunting, wrote about his find. David Skelly, director of the Peabody, has written: ‘As [Hunting] notes, Hesperornis is perhaps the least famous of the most important fossils ever discovered. Her book should change that.’ —Daniel Brinkman, “Rare As Hens’ Teeth,” Yale Alumni Magazine

This book is about Hunting’s great-grandfather, who discovered 83-million-year-old dinosaur bones in western Kansas during an expedition with the legendary paleontologist O. C. Marsh in 1872. Part biography, part memoir, this book leaves the reader delighted to have gained a greater knowledge about paleontology, the settlement of Kansas, and the author’s interesting ancestors. … For me, an equally intriguing reference point is the author’s musings as a parent. Hunting contemplates what her great-grandfather’s parents may have thought about their son’s travel with O. C. Marsh to western Kansas in 1872, and her parents’ concerns about her brother Pete’s involvement in Vietnam, where he was the first civilian casualty of the Vietnam War in 1965. The author muses, “What of our sons’ and daughters’ wings? If we hold our children back, hoping to shield them from every risk and danger, how will they ever learn to fly?” —Jennifer Kassebaum, owner of Flint Hills Books and reviewer for High Plains Public Radio

Jill Hunting has woven together an unforgettable tapestry of family history, fossil hunting, and high adventures in the American West. This finely honed and deeply original book reminds us that the past and the present aren’t as far apart as they sometimes seem to be, and the lives of Hunting’s Yale-centric ancestors have surprising resonances today. A fascinating read for both dinophiles and history lovers. —Julia Flynn Siler, New York Times best-selling author of The White Devil’s Daughter, Lost Kingdom, and The House of Mondavi

A person’s life is not just a thread from birth to death, but rather a complicated tapestry interwoven with the lives of many others. In the case of For Want of Wings, the author’s careful research has restored the fabric surrounding the life of Thomas Hubbard Russell (1851–1916), her great-grandfather. Russell was a Yale graduate who made an important, but largely forgotten, scientific discovery in 1872 while collecting fossils with O. C. Marsh in the wilds of western Kansas, and then went on to become a respected medical surgeon in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. His life and the background of his once-in-a-lifetime discovery of a ‘bird with teeth’ make for a fascinating read. —Michael J. Everhart, author of Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of the Western Interior Sea and Adjunct Curator of Paleontology, Sternberg Museum of Natural History

Jill Hunting is a sleuth when it comes to finding details, and she has the talent to weave many threads together to create a coherent story that combines personal history, family history, national history, natural history, travel, American West, important characters, and more. She takes the reader on the search and adventure to tell the story of finding the first complete fossil of Hesperornis regalis. Hunting illuminates a long-buried facet of the paleontology and history of Kansas. It is a gem. —Leo E. Oliva, author of Fort Wallace: Sentinel on the Smoky Hill Trail and Fort Larned on the Santa Fe Trail

Jill Hunting’s For Want of Wings is the enrapturing, wide-ranging, and thoughtful account of her great-grandfather’s discovery of a rare dinosaur fossil in 1872. … Like digging through the ‘sepulcher of chalk in a Kansas fossil bed,’ the book begins with a few scant documents: rare historical photographs, clippings from an alumni magazine, and family hearsay. It uses these to illuminate [Thomas H.] Russell’s ‘inconspicuous life.’ The exploration then stretches from the dusty archives of the [Yale] Peabody Museum and journals of similar expeditions, to accounts of the Russell family’s ties to early abolitionists, to colorful descriptions of life on the Kansas frontier and the region’s natural history. … For Want of Wings is a riveting and entertaining work of scientific history that also considers the value of connecting with one’s family story. —Foreword Reviews, *starred review*