In the dust of the Gilded Age Bone Wars, two vastly different men emerge with a mission to fill the empty halls of New York's struggling American Museum of Natural History: Henry Fairfield Osborn, a privileged socialite whose reputation rests on the museum's success, and intrepid Kansas-born fossil hunter Barnum Brown.

When Brown unearths the first Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils in the Montana wilderness, forever changing the world of paleontology, Osborn sees a path to save his museum from irrelevancy. With four-foot-long jaws capable of crushing the bones of its prey and hips that powered the animal to run at speeds of 25 miles per hour, the T. Rex suggests a prehistoric ecosystem more complex than anyone imagined. As the public turns out in droves to cower before this bone-chilling giant of the past and wonder at the mysteries of its disappearance, Brown and Osborn together turn dinosaurs from a biological oddity into a beloved part of culture.

Vivid and engaging, The Monster's Bones journeys from prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the unforgiving badlands of the American West to the penthouses of Manhattan. With a wide-ranging cast of robber barons, eugenicists, and opportunistic cowboys, New York Times best-selling author David K. Randall reveals how a monster of a bygone era ignited a new understanding of our planet and our place within it.

Author: David K. Randall
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 06/07/2022
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781324006534


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 01/01/2022 pg. 17
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2022
Library Journal 05/01/2022 pg. 112
Publishers Weekly 06/06/2022
Choice 02/01/2023
BookPage 06/01/2022

About the Author
Randall, David K.: - David K. Randall is a senior reporter at Reuter's. He is the New York Times best-selling author of Dreamland, The King and Queen of Malibu, and Black Death at the Golden Gate. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.