Suspended animation in fiction which is indistinguishable from death. In American fiction, the first story to deal with suspended animation is the tale of Rip Van Winkle, a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819 as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. In the story, a British subject in the American colonies wanders into the Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolutionary War, and finds a group of fairies, whose moonshine he drinks. He then falls asleep for 20 years, and returns to his village in what is now the United States, finding his home town
Katherine Van Winkle Palmer Katherine Van Winkle Palmer Katherine Van Winkle Palmer (1895 – September 12, 1982) was a Tertiary paleontologist, a scientist who studies fossils from the Cenozoic Era, and geologist. Palmer was recognized for her field/doctoral study on veneracean lamellibranches, a class of bivalve mollusks that include clams, scallops and oysters. Palmer was a director of the Paleontological Research Institution in New York. At this position, Palmer oversaw the publication of numerous "Bulletins of American Paleontology" as well as several issues of "Palaeontographica Americana". Palmer was born to Jacob Van Winkle and Edith Van Winkle in Oakville, Washington, where she spent her