Decadent Dinosaurs: Directed Evolution in British and North American Literature, 1890s–1970s

Despite paying concerted attention to evolutionary mechanisms, literary scholars have rarely focused on forms of “directed evolution” like orthogenesis (evolution along a linear track) and phylogeronty (the parallel between the lifespan of an animal group and the lifespan of an ageing individual). These analogical concepts represented a paleontological manifestation of wider interest in human decadence. I analyze their exploration in three areas: popular adventure fiction, social reform novels by Marie Stopes and H. G. Wells, and writings by paleontologists. Across these texts, I argue that directed evolution was used to give a recognizable trajectory to prehistoric and modern life alike, turning certain extinct animals into moral exemplars of evolutionary failure. While reformers hoped that humans could escape the orthogenetic grooves confining nonhuman animals to extinction, this optimism was shadowed both with fears that humans might inevitably face decadence and with a sense that survival meant mediocrity.