Kangaroo ham. Rhino pie. Trunk of elephant. Horse's tongue. Domestic life was a trifle off at William Buckland's home. Some visitors to his Oxford, England, house in the early 1800s best remembered his front hallway, lined with the grinning skulls of fossilized monsters. Others recalled the live monkeys swinging around. But no one could forget Buckland's diet. A deeply religious geologist, he held the story of Noah dear, and he ate his way through most of Noah's ark. There were only a few animals he couldn't stomach: "The taste of mole was the most repulsive I knew," Buckland once mused, "until...