Within the pantheon of Victorian-era naturalists, there was no villain more sinister than Richard Owen. That’s what I had always been taught, anyway. Though undeniably brilliant, teachers and textbooks conceded, Owen was a jealous, religiously-motivated scientist who utterly despised the idea of evolution. Among his worst offenses was an anonymous review – which gave away the identity of the author through its purple prose and self-reverential style – which severely criticized Charles Darwin’s masterwork On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. If Darwin is the great hero of late 19th century science, then Owen was his unscrupulous enemy. Given his historical treatment, it is easy to envision Owen wringing his hands and pacing his study as he