The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World

by David K. Randall

Overview

One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best Books of 2022

A gripping narrative of a fearless paleontologist, the founding of America’s most loved museums, and the race to find the largest dinosaurs on record.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324006534
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/07/2022
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	51,157
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David K. Randall is the New York Times best-selling author of four books, including Dreamland and Black Death at the Golden Gate. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. A senior reporter at Reuters, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Prologue The Center of the World xiii

Chapter 1 A Life That Could Contain Him 1

Chapter 2 A World Previous to Ours 13

Chapter 3 Scraping the Surface 37

Chapter 4 Creatures Equally Colossal and Equally Strange 46

Chapter 5 Empty Rooms 61

Chapter 6 A Real Adventure 72

Chapter 7 Finding a Place in the World 87

Chapter 8 The Uttermost Part of the Earth 95

Chapter 9 Big Things 111

Chapter 10 A Very Costly Season 131

Chapter 11 The Bones of the King 141

Chapter 12 New Beginnings 156

Chapter 13 The Hardest Work He Could Find 172

Chapter 14 A New World 185

Chapter 15 The Monster Unveiled 199

Chapter 16 A Second Chance 214

Epilogue The Monster's Tracks 226

Acknowledgments 237

Selected Bibliography and Sources 239

Index 251

Editorial Reviews

06/06/2022

Reuters reporter Randall (Black Death at the Golden Gate) chronicles the fossil-hunting exploits of Barnum Brown (1873–1963) in this colorful adventure saga. Hailed as “the Father of the Dinosaurs” in his New York Times obituary, Brown discovered his first fossils in coal deposits his father dug up on the family’s Kansas farm. His uncanny knack for finding the mineral-preserved remains of ancient creatures eventually landed him a job working for paleontologist and railroad scion Henry Fairfield Osborn, who was leading the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. Randall takes note of how Osborn’s racist and eugenicist beliefs intertwined with his overweening ambition, but the focus is on Brown, who most famously discovered and excavated the first documented tyrannosaurus rex remains in Montana’s Hell Creek Formation. Randall draws on Brown’s unpublished memoirs and biographies by his daughter, Frances, and second wife, Lilian, to draw a multidimensional portrait of the paleontologist, and astutely analyzes the T. rex’s place in popular culture while maintaining that the most important lesson to be learned from the dinosaur’s “fearsome reign” on Earth may be that “the climate always wins.” Paleontology buffs will thrill to this vibrant, treasure-filled account. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"The Monster's Bones is such an irresistibly good read and such a compellingly smart book. David Randall takes his tale of fossil-hunting and museum building and deepens it into something more—a story in which both the long-vanished dinosaurs and the humans who discover them are equally dangerous in their own unique ways."

Deborah Blum

"A spectacular yarn of science and adventure, The Monster's Bones takes us back to the birth of paleontology, when a Kansas farm boy made the find of a century—and a wealthy racist in New York tried to exploit it. Randall has excavated a classic, a story every bit as big and head-spinning as the T. Rex at its center."

Jason Fagone

"Exciting as any action tale, The Monster’s Bones shares the human stories behind some of history’s most thrilling fossil discoveries."

BookPage

★ 05/01/2022

Randall's (Black Death at the Golden Gate) book takes the reader across the North and South American continents in pursuit of the great dinosaur bones, leading to the discovery of the Tyrannosaurus rex in 1902 in Montana. Randall breathes life into the human side of natural history, detailing the pioneers, paleontologists, and other personalities that discovered the dinosaurs, including the 19th-century scientists Richard Owen, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Othniel Charles Marsh, Edward Drinker Cope, and Barnum Brown. In addition to the discovery of Tyrannosaurus rex, the book explores the discoveries of other great prehistoric creatures during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Brontosaurus and Triceratops. The landscapes of the Badlands in the American West and Patagonia in South America are well described. In addition to the adventure of paleontological excavation, Randall also considers how museum collections are developed, exploring the rivalries between great institutions like the Carnegie Museum and Pittsburgh and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Barnum Brown's travels and his discoveries for the American Museum of Natural History are thoughtfully recounted. VERDICT Randall successfully writes the human story behind the discovery of dinosaurs; a book that will delight readers of science and history.—Jeffrey Meyer

Library Journal

2022-03-19
The story of the world’s most iconic dinosaur.

The central human figure in this book is a man named Barnum Brown (1873-1963), who transcended his humble upbringing on a Kansas farm to become one of the nation’s most accomplished paleontologists. Reuters senior reporter Randall, author of Black Death at the Golden Gate, among other books, offers an astute and entertaining account of Brown’s indefatigable pursuit of fossils and the intense competition he entered into with rival hunters. The author sets Brown’s major discoveries against a broader consideration of the cultural significance of his greatest find, in 1900: the first partial skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex, “the largest known predator in Earth’s history.” Randall carefully outlines the shifts in scientific understanding prompted by the appearance of this “monster,” and he makes a persuasive case for its profound impact on our conception of the history of life on Earth. As he notes, “the thud with which its discovery landed and shifted our understanding of ourselves and our planet reverberates still.” The author vividly renders the early and ongoing commercial appeal of T. rex, and a prominent theme is the often contentious intersection of science and big business in the fossil trade: Museums and private collectors began to contend fiercely for specimens in the late 19th century, with the fearsome T. rex becoming, after Brown’s discovery, the most prized target. Also memorable are Randall’s investigations of some of the most colorful personalities in the burgeoning field of dinosaur studies, including the infamous combatants in the so-called Bone Wars, Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, whose struggles for personal distinction were often outrageously unscrupulous. In the epilogue, Randall charts the dramatic growth of the T. rex industry over the past century or so, underscoring the importance of Brown’s pioneering efforts.

An absorbing account of early dinosaur discoveries and their cultural legacies.

Kirkus Reviews

"Barnum Brown and T. rex, the dinosaur he literally exploded from the depths of time from remote Montana quarries, lie at the heart of David K. Randall's paleontological thriller that is a tell-all of how the man came to be, a fortuitous journey from a small town in Kansas to the halls of America's greatest natural history museum in New York. I read the volume spellbound... Readers are taken back in time to feel the grit and drama of the early fossil discoveries. And those stories serve to highlight the enduring promise of paleontology—the chance to be the next Barnum Brown."

Paul Sereno

"David K. Randall brings alive that swashbuckling time at the turn of the 20th century, when dinosaurs were still a relatively new concept... [He] combines his journalist’s eye for details with a storyteller’s flair for spectacle. His tale is as rollicking as a Western—and in many senses, it is one... Along the way, Randall grapples with a profound question: Should fossils be treated as commodities?"

Atlantic - Steve Brusatte

"[An] entertaining, skillfully told history of Gilded Age fossil-hunting... Randall expertly captures the poisonous mix of personal ambition, ruthlessness, big money and nationalist zeal that drove it."

Wall Street Journal - Christoph Irmscher

09/01/2022

At the end of the 19th century, American museums, pressured to create a revenue stream that would sustain them, began to send parties of scientists, excavators, treasure hunters, and adventure seekers to find and extract dinosaur bones. These groups scoured some of the most inaccessible places on the continent and hauled tons of specimens by horse and wagon to the nearest railroad spur. When Barnum Brown discovered the first Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton for the American Museum of Natural History, it changed how people thought about life, extinction, and Darwin's theory of evolution. The race to find the oldest and the biggest specimens of T. rex was on. Randall (Black Death at the Golden Gate) tells this story of exploration and discovery by following the work of Brown, the museums competing for preeminence, and the millionaires who funded the projects. He underlines the enduring fascination with dinosaurs by describing the Christie's auction of "Stan" the T. rex in 2020; the skeleton sold for $31.8 million. Narrator Roman Howell offers an enjoyable dramatic reading. VERDICT Recommended for history readers and dinosaur lovers.—Joanna M. Burkhardt

Library Journal - Audio

Roman Howell’s narration makes the true story of Barnum Brown, the fossil-hunting scientist from Kansas who found the first Tyrannosaurus rex, seem like an adventure novel. Howell sounds excited and fascinated by Brown’s ability to uncover fossils in what was becoming a crowded field. As dinosaurs became popular, the paleontologist from New York’s American Museum was always competing with rival museums. Howell consistently puts emotion and personality into the historical material, as when he uses a gruff voice to embody the industrial titan Andrew Carnegie, whose philanthropy funded a Pittsburgh museum. As the story of how dinosaurs brought natural history into popular culture unfolds, listeners will hear about the tension between elites and the museums’ new mass audiences, and learn about how eugenics supporters interpreted fossil finds. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Roman Howell’s narration makes the true story of Barnum Brown, the fossil-hunting scientist from Kansas who found the first Tyrannosaurus rex, seem like an adventure novel. Howell sounds excited and fascinated by Brown’s ability to uncover fossils in what was becoming a crowded field. As dinosaurs became popular, the paleontologist from New York’s American Museum was always competing with rival museums. Howell consistently puts emotion and personality into the historical material, as when he uses a gruff voice to embody the industrial titan Andrew Carnegie, whose philanthropy funded a Pittsburgh museum. As the story of how dinosaurs brought natural history into popular culture unfolds, listeners will hear about the tension between elites and the museums’ new mass audiences, and learn about how eugenics supporters interpreted fossil finds. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2022 - AudioFile