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

by David K. Randall

A Science Friday Best Book to Read This Summer

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. 8 pages of photographs

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Science, Dinosaurs, Audiobook, Nature, Biography

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 2022

About the author

David K. Randall is a senior reporter at Reuters and has also written for Forbes, the New York Times, and New York magazine. He is an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World
by David K. Randall
Narration by Roman Howell

This seemed well researched and very informative but written in a way that kept me interested from the very beginning to the end. The book read more like a novel than a historical account with just facts. This book was filled with emotion, intrigue, treachery, love, the excitement of discovery, and fear of defeat. Wonderful real characters that felt alive and intriguing.

This book mainly has two characters but it discusses many more that is involved in the movement of starting a great museum, what should go into it, and the great bone race. Also, how the dinosaurs bone race started, who was involved, and when is explained in here. It really was exciting if you love history, dinosaurs, and fate!

Its really amazing how this boy from a farm, Brown, became such an intricate part of the dino preservation and discovery history. How he got his name and who he met during his life too!

I found this book very interesting and I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this awesome book! I learned so much! I have read a lot about the bone wars but this took me into personal lives and let me experience it from a whole new perspective!
The narration was excellent!
Thanks again! Highly recommend!

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always been fascinated by dinosaurs and the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a paleontologist. Unfortunately, the thought of actually having to dig the bones up out of the dirt deterred me. Fortunately, the fossil hunter Barnum Brown was not deterred and he found many fossils, including three examples of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Its display in the American Museum of Natural History made, and continues to make, the museum a must-see destination.

I enjoyed this book, but I really wanted more about the dinosaurs and the fossil finding expeditions and less about the biographies of the womanizing Brown and of Henry Fairfield Osborn, the wealthy head of the museum. I hadn’t known that Osborn was a white supremacist who made sure that his opinions were reflected in the museum’s displays. Interesting detail, but I want dinosaurs. The book also describes the various rivalries among the fossil hunters (and the institutions that financed them) and the intense pressure to find an attraction to shore up the financial status of the museum. The audiobook was narrated by Roman Howell. He read each sentence like it was describing the most momentous event ever. It wasn’t. 3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the publisher.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating.

[Pauline · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is not a "gripping narrative" but it is an interesting book. I was going to say it is an interesting story, but in fact it is a number of stories that have some connection to museums or dinosaur bones. It starts with Barnum Brown and comes back to him repeatedly, but there are so many other people whose stories are also told that it was quite hard to keep track of who was who, or when they lived, since it does so many flashbacks to show what led to something that had just been mentioned. I found the story of how the history of dinosaur bones and the history of museums shaped each other, but I didn't find much of the biographical detail all the enlightening. A few people were key and their stories needed to be told, but some of the others were so peripheral that it was more confusing than helpful to hear where they grew up and who their parents were and so on.
My biggest complaint was not the book itself but the narrator of the audiobook, who seemed to feel that *every* sentence had to be charged with noticeable excitement, and I got tired of this very quickly.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever been to a natural history museum? Do you know anything about the most famous “dinosaur finds” in the world? Well, this is all about that.
It is simple breathtaking and shocking to gaze upon a skeleton of a dinosaur that’s bigger than a house.
This book retells in vivid detail the discovery and proof of fossils. It was like a vocal tour! I could see everything.
The book took me to Patagonia, Montana and several museums.This historical tour was interesting and delightful. I also learned about the people who relentlessly search for them and felt like I knew them after listening to this. I highly recommend it if you love history, especially dinosaurs.
I chose to listen to this book on audio and it was narrated by Roman Howell who was excellent and it’s 9 hours and 13 minutes long.
Thanks HighBridge Audio via NetGalley.

[Daniela Pierro · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first picked up The Monster’s Bones, I was dismayed; did we really need yet another account of a man making big advances in science? Fortunately, David Randall’s writing managed to change my mind. In detailing the contributions of early paleontologists, he also highlighted some overlooked discoveries made by women. He also refused to paint some of these famous men’s names on any pedestal, by pointing out their petty rivalries, racist attitudes, and nauseating support of eugenics.

In this book, Randall traces the life of Barnum Brown, beginning when he was named by a spontaneous uncle who loved the circus. Brown grew up as a charismatic young lad in 1889 Carbondale, Kansas, where iron machines were beginning to replace oxen in fields. At times, descriptions seemed a bit overly glowy; “to be in his company meant unshackling whatever tied you to the present and finding yourself compelled to explore beyond not only the distant horizon but whatever came after that, pushing past everything known until you reached a blank spot on the map.” However, these dazzling qualities made him an easy protagonist to root for.

While the main figures were exclusively men, Randall mentioned two important women who actually discovered some of the first dinosaur skeletons. Mary Anning found the first Icthyosaurus, and sold hundreds of her collected specimens to wealthy men who enjoyed the credit for her discoveries. Soon after, Mary Mantell noticed the fossilized tooth of an Iguanodon, which her husband further investigated. His bitter rivalry with Richard Owen grew incredibly petty, as each criticized the other’s interpretations of discovered fossils.

The rising prevalence of mining also contributed to some early insights in geology; familiar with the rock layers, miners were “among the first to realize that the planet was much older than a literal interpretation of the Bible would suggest.” Industrialization and mining allowed priceless gemstones to be incorporated into museum collections, “producing specimens that would never be known if not for the thirst of capitalism.”

The engaging writing style was littered with fun facts about the early paleontologists’ endeavors. Did you know they licked things to see if they were fossils, based on whether their tongues got stuck? The naming of these species was sometimes hilarious, like a fossil that Othniel Charles Marsh thought was grotesque being named Ceratops horridus.

I was a bit perplexed, however, at the author’s comparison of these early fossil discoveries to a “lizard rhinoceros,” “creature that looked like an alien,” and even “reptilian cows”—descriptions that made little sense to me, apart from sounding impossible. Perhaps this was done to illustrate the guesswork and lack of understanding at the time.

I had no idea that so many advances in paleontology were driven by professional—and highly unprofessional—rivalries. When the giddy Edward Drinker Cope published his newfound “twisted reptile,” Marsh utterly humiliated him by revealing that he had stuck the head on the tip of the tail, initiating a bitter feud in which each frantically tried to claim more species than the other. Reading about the drama of the ensuing Bone Wars felt like listening to decades of gossip.

Conflicts existed not only among paleontologists, but also between them and politicians. Hawkins’ endeavor to construct a Paleozoic Museum with models of prehistoric organisms was met with political opposition from New York’s “Boss” Tweed, whose prioritized funding other projects and, to silence Hawkins’ protests, hired vandals who smashed three years’ worth of his sculptures into smithereens.

One person who had one foot in the political and the other in the scientific sphere was Henry Fairfield Osborn. As the nephew of J. P. Morgan and childhood friend of Theodore Roosevelt, he grew up in a Manhattan brownstone. At the all-male Princeton University, he won the “cane spree,” in which underclassmen smacked each other with canes until only one remained standing—earning his classmates’ respect and my total horror. His father had floated “his son’s ambitions on a cloud of family money.” The author especially noted the racist views of Osborn, and his extreme misconceptions about human evolution, describing him as “scathing and impetuous” and “caustic,” and even a Nazi sympathizer. In search of fame, Osborn set out to fill the mass of empty rooms at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).

Meanwhile, the charismatic Barnum Brown was digging up the skull of an Oreodont, and filling his diary with entries like “such a beautiful sunset” and “the Dr. [Williston] is well pleased with my skull. It is the greatest find so far.” The worlds of these two extremely different men collided when Osborn hired Brown to collect fossils in New Mexico. The following chapters described a tale of two scientists, with opposite backgrounds, who were united by a common hunger for ancient bones.

The same day that Brown arrived at the AMNH, Osborn sent him on a boat to Patagonia. He braved seasickness, played poker games with John Hatcher (the man who discovered Triceratops), dodged the occasional shark while digging up fossils at low tide, survived a shipwreck, and even came face-to-face with a roaring mountain lion.

Rivalries not only existed between fossil-hunters, but also institutions like the American Museum and the Carnegie Museum. The Carnegie group had carried out increasingly prolific digs, even finding a large Diplodocus skeleton. Meanwhile, working for the AMNH and suffering freezing field conditions in rural Montana, Brown’s characteristic enthusiasm dwindled. Searching for a triceratops skull, he used dynamite to blast away part of a sandstone hill, revealing a “large Carnivorous Dinosaur not described my Marsh.” As such, the Tyrannosaurus rex enters the picture.

The author accurately described the bustling happenings of New York, with its “world-famous art, professional sports, high-society murders: in such a cityscape, it was hard for anything—even a 40-foot-long Brontosaurus—to stand out.” Gradually, the bones of this dinosaur, which continue to grace the AMNH’s entrance today, have become a major shock and draw to even the least impressible New Yorkers.

In a stark contrast to the snarky dialogue describing the Bone Wars and the drama that ensued between rivals, Randall’s writing turned somber, when describing how diseases like whooping cough and diphtheria overwhelmed the city, killing sixteen thousand newborns in 1909. Scarlet fever killed Marion, who had been married to Barnum Brown. Having idealized him in the first chapters, I was shocked that he chose to give his daughter to her grandparents, and hastened away to the bleak field, as if to escape not only his grief but also his former life. The growing popularity of the T. rex seemed far from the man who discovered it, as he “retreated into the badlands as a way of keeping the modern world and its responsibilities at a distance.”

As possibly “the best dinosaur collector who ever lived,” Brown’s impacts on paleontology were vast. In the final chapters, his health struggled and he reunited with his daughter, Frances, who matched his energetic spirit. Eventually, he would even advise a Disney film that included dinosaurs: Fantasia. Long after he passed, the T. rex continues to draw museum visitors, inspire movies, and has become deeply ingrained in pop culture. After all, “Tyrannosaurus rex remains surprisingly alive for a creature that went extinct 66 million years ago.”

This book is an excellent read for anyone who is curious about paleontology, fascinated by dinosaurs, or willing to be entertained by petty feuds between famous scientists. I was astounded by the complicated lives of these biologists, and particularly impressed by Brown’s talent and fortitude in the field. The next time I visit the AMNH, I will think not only of the evolution of each skeleton, but also the stories of the men and women who uncovered them.

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

[Cecilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take a moment to think of the first time you ever heard of Tyrannosaurus rex. Maybe it was when you were a child wandering around a museum or toy store, fascinated and perhaps a little afraid; maybe it was in science class, learning about the history of the planet; or maybe you can’t remember, which isn’t surprising. T. rex has become so embedded in popular culture, seen in everything from movies to kids’ toys, that it’s hard to imagine when it first entered our minds, much less wonder how its entry into common knowledge and public consciousness came about in the first place. That’s where David K. Randall’s The Monster’s Bones comes in – not only does it tell the story of the discovery of the first T. rex specimen, it also immerses readers in the fascinating life of its discoverer, Barnum Brown, and the unexpected drama and adventure of the first fossil hunters.

Randall begins by introducing a young boy who is eager to leave his small Kansas family farm and go on to do great things, perhaps someday reflecting the showmanship of his namesake, P. T. Barnum, founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Brown’s path into paleontology is unlikely – he never obtains a college degree, and doesn’t enjoy the academic side of the field enough to author more than 2 papers over his long career. But he has drive, physical strength, and a talent for uncovering fossils that is unmatched by others on the first expeditions he goes on. Soon enough, he is recommended to Henry Fairfield Osborn at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York as a collector, a job that he holds until his retirement. Randall lays out Brown’s career like the series of adventure stories that it was, bringing him everywhere from Patagonia in South America, where he led a six-month solo expedition, to Hell Creek, Montana, where he dug up the first T. rex bones. Alongside this narrative, Randall fleshes out the rise to prominence of the once-struggling American Museum of Natural History and Osborn, the person at its helm.

One of the things Randall does best is not shying away from the American Museum’s eugenicist and racist history in its connection to Osborn and other of the country’s elites who were patrons of the institutions at the forefront of dinosaur bone discovery. For example, Randall discusses how the American Museum’s exhibits were inaccurately set up by Osborn to show the evolution of life culminating in what he called the white race, which he believed was a “superior breed,” and the product of millions of years of evolutionary refinement. In this way, Randall does not try to paint an idealistic picture of history, but rather tells the story as it was. Moreover, he does a good job showing the complex ways paleontology was pulled in many different directions and by many different forces. These include the groundbreaking discoveries of Brown and other early fossil hunters, the public attention received by the museums displaying their findings, and the money of the small aristocratic class who were the museums’ patrons. This push-and-pull can get overwhelming and hard to follow at times, but by the end of the book, Randall makes the legacy of Brown and his contemporaries crystal clear, and leaves a lasting impression.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a mix between an historical deep-dive into the forces powering paleontological discovery and adventure-thriller with the spirit of an Indiana Jones movie. Overall, I enjoyed this book and learned a lot about the history of paleontology and the American Museum. I think Randall is ultimately successful at revealing the human stories that underlie science and popular culture’s fascination with dinosaurs, particularly the famous T. rex.

[Cris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Im so impressed with how the author made a topic that could have been very boring, exciting! This book reminded me of a real life Mummy or Indiana Jones. A farm boy going out, and making a huge discovery that changes history! I will be purchasing a copy or two for some dinosaur lovers in my life!

[Flynn O'Dacre · Rating 4 out of 5]

2025 is a tough year for girls who love the T. Rex at the ROM… super excited for him to be out on display again 🦖

Also my first book by a man in a long long time…

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the synopsis and title promise a micro history of how the T. rex led to the fake and success of a New York museum, the truth is this is an over detailed biography of the two men behind that success.
I noticed multiple times that I had no idea what was happening because I’d zoned out entirely, the writing getting into almost microscopic levels of detail about totally irrelevant facts and stories.
There’s university politics, details of how to unearth a fossil, the horror of a fire in a museum with live exhibits- just extreme levels of background that are totally unnecessary if you’re waiting for a story about the discovery of T. rex. I still had no idea who half the people mentioned in the book were at the 45% mark. Why was this professor mentioned? Who did he teach? I don’t know! But I know women weren’t accepted into the university. Because the author felt that detail important.
But if you realize that this is not in fact what was promised on the label, and continue reading you get a biography of the two men in question. And every single minute detail of their lives and all of the people who had an effect on them. Every single event that could be tied to the museum they eventually build together.
Supremely disappointing.

[Bruce Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolute pleasure to read. Well-written, well-researched, and filled with fascinating details, insightful history, and a colorful cast of characters. As the title and sub-title note, the book is about finding fossils, in particular the first T. Rex. But there's so much more here than that. There are out-sized egos, vicious competitions (cf, "The Bone Wars," in which rival leaders took every opportunity to malign and undermine one another, and teams in the field would hurl stones at each other and lock buildings so that trains would be missed), life-threatening adventures in primitive and dangerous badlands in North America and Patagonia, eccentric amateurs and men filled with boundless ambition, brave men and women, and more than few craven individuals.

But as much as it is a history of fossil hunting, the book is a captivating picture of the times, of an America making its way from the agrarian 19th century and the closing of the frontier, to the more urban, technology-shaped world of the 20th.

The story begins with a discovery made by a 12-year old British girl named Mary Anning (a girl whom the local townsfolk had always found a bit odd even before she started pulling strange bones out of the ground—an opinion perhaps formed after she survived a lightning strike that killed three adults standing near her.). From here, Randall introduces us to Britain's Prince Albert, Arthur Conan Doyle, Boss Tweed, Gilded Age millionaires who seek to polish their images by funding museums, and historical figures like PT Barnum, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Butch Cassidy, and even a couple of spies.

The key protagonist of the book a young man from Kansas named Barnum Brown -- yes, named after PT Barnum -- who left the family farm to become the world's most renowned fossil hunter. He had no formal training and was at best a mediocre student, but he had uncanny strength and endurance, and "a magical ability to unearth a specimen, like someone who can sit down and complete a jigsaw puzzle without first needing to find the edges." Not an easy feat, as the book shows: Finding a fossil requires the ability to see, outside the bounds of time, two different scenes at once: the immediate features of the landscape before you, and what it likely looked like millions of years ago. Brown could do it, though, no matter how dangerous the circumstances. He'd go off by himself for months and come back with the most astonishing finds.

I remember growing up on Long Island and the excitement I felt when my mother or sister would take me to the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan -- the thrill of seeing the enormous skeletons of the dinosaurs and the murals depicting that long-ago world. "The Monster's Bones" shows how all of that came to be. How an earlier Manhattan museum with a similar name, the brainchild of showman PT Barnum, drew crowds with fraudulent exhibits and fake scholars. (It mysteriously caught fire in 1865 and burned to the ground.) How more serious (though not necessarily nicer) individuals worked to create something new, but struggled to puzzle out what a natural history museum should be and what would make people want to visit one. (The question did arise as to 'what kind of people': The presence of working-class visitors in the museum did not sit well with everyone. A “professor with large glasses” who visited the exhibit called it “in bad taste in a place devoted to science.") How it came to be that dinosaurs would capture the imagination of the world, and be used in equal measure to educate, entertain (yes, King Kong makes an appearance here, but oddly, "Jurassic Park" does not), and -- more darkly -- be used to perpetuate the racist eugenics movement.

There's no way to capture all the pleasures in this book. Those murals I loved as a kid? They were painted by a guy named Charles R. Knight, who was legally blind. I learned how quickly dinosaurs made their way into American 'moving pictures' (fun fact: "The Lost World" was the first commercial film to be shown as in-flight entertainment on an airplane). I learned to how incredibly difficult it was to find the fossils, but even more, how hard it was to transport them from the field to museums. One T. Rex skull pulled from the stone weighed almost 800 pounds! That's just the skull. Add to that bones the size of tree trunks and vertebrae three feet in circumference. All the horse-drawn wagons that broke down carrying this precious cargo across rugged terrain.

And then there's what the bones came to signify: At the turn of the twentieth century, the forces of industrialization and the rise of corporations handed a handful of men wealth on a scale never before seen. For them, art would no longer do. Something far more rare and difficult would be necessary to reflect the towering position of this new group of gilded tycoons, able to sway millions of lives around the world with their decisions. Nothing less than acquiring and displaying fossils of dinosaurs—the largest and most powerful beasts to ever walk the Earth—could mirror their status in life.

At the turn of the twenty first century, this culture of acquisition and status would remain. Museums, institutions, and mysterious individuals bid millions of dollars at auction houses for T. Rex skeletons. In 2007, we learn, "actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicolas Cage fought a bidding war over the 32-inch skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a close cousin of the T. rex. Cage won with a $276,000 bid." Cage had to return it, though, when it was discovered that the skull had been illegally smuggled out of Mongolia.

In short, it is one of the most enjoyable blendings of popular science and cultural history I've read in a long time. I would have liked more photos and illustrations, but because I was reading a digital edition I could switch over to Google at any time and see exactly what Kendall was talking about.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting account of the man who discovered the first T.Rex in the badlands of Montana. Not so much a biography, but a very readable introduction to the first paleontologists and the millionaires that funded their digs.

The book contains a lot of history on the American Museum of Natural History in NYC and it's President during the "Gilded Age Bone Wars", Henry Fairfield Osborn. Together Osborn and Brown, from 1908 until 1933, accumulated one of the finest fossil collections in the world.

If you know me, you know science is not one my favorite subjects. However, this very readable account of science and nature educated and entertained.

[The Atlantic]

"In his new book, 'The Monster’s Bones,' David K. Randall brings alive that swashbuckling time at the turn of the 20th century, when dinosaurs were still a relatively new concept, and the science of paleontology a weapon as America’s wealthiest men and institutions jostled for power in the waning days of the Gilded Age. Randall, a senior reporter at Reuters, 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. It tells of an age when paleontology was woven into the fabric of the American frontier, scientists reached the field by stagecoach and Pullman car, and literal cowboys collected dinosaur bones from the badlands, in service of the East Coast gentry. Along the way, Randall grapples with a profound question: Should fossils be treated as commodities?" — Steve Brusatte

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disjointed yet (mostly) insightful — the narrative could have benefited from either a tighter focus on its characters or paleontology. The undercurrent of New York museum competition at the turn of the century was not interesting beyond the first time it was revealed. When it hits its stride — about halfway in — the story finally captures the magnitude of the T. Rex discovery. However, the expedition to find the fossil(s) comes about without much fanfare and, ultimately, the story seems mostly concerned with how to stage the skeleton for the museum audience rather than the ripples it would send in the scientific community.

Worth a read, but I would’ve loved to give this subject matter to an author like Candice Millard. The structure weaves in and out too much to captivate as much as it could have, and framing the eventual discovery in such an anticlimactic fashion dampens the impact.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Honestly, I've never really thought about where dinosaur bones came from or how they were collected. We can go to a museum and see the effects of decades of blood, sweat, and toil without ever understanding the people behind all that hard work. This book introduced us to those people and told their stories, many who I had heard of before but didn't realize their contribution to this enterprise.

I felt the author did a great job with the research and was able to convey a lot of information to us in a n easy to read manner. It was informative without reading like a textbook.

I listened to the audiobook. The narrator was charming and engaging.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Laura Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once the story got going it was a great read, however it seemed like the author went into a ton of detail for each person mentioned, irregardless to their importance to the story. This definitely made things confusing and had me flipping back several pages just to figure out who we were talking about

[Anthony Accinelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

A remarkable story written unremarkably.

[Abigail H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a random read that I quite enjoyed??? At its base: FASCINATING. Just…beginning to end, truly so so interesting. I was a dinosaur girl as a kid, which I largely owe to the big paleontology sandbox at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. (Not the Dinosaur ride, though…because my horror and fear for that ride didn’t change until much later in my life.) This book was exciting, but also insightful—I had no idea there were so many deeper things associated with the bone race…racism, politics, scandalllll. Overall, I’d recommend this to anyone who wants a non-fiction read to understand something you probably haven’t thought that much about but WILL BE after reading this.

[Alex Yurcaba · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a great story, and it’s well-told! I think there are so many more threads here that I wish could have been pulled on in more detail, but I understand the constraints of writing history for a popular audience. I think this would work really well as a television series. Either way, the dino kid in me is so pleased to have read this.

[Bethanyanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was an excellent example of a living book for adults. It encompasses so much history between the science of paleontology, evolution, genetics, and historical events.

I never knew the discovery of dinosaurs would be so dramatic

[Kim McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even if you have never gazed up in wonder at a dinosaur skeleton or shivered at the first glimpse of T.Rex in JURASSIC PARK you will be pulled into this account of the race for dinosaur bones especially the elusive full skeletons of giant wonders like T.Rex. The story begins in Gilded Age New York where the robber barons began to amass personal collections of art and curiosities such as dinosaur bones. They began to fund expeditions primarily to the Wild West and want to see their name chiseled in stone above the doors of huge museums. This is how the American Museum, now the American Museum of Natural History began and fought to stay alive through the dinosaur treasures they could find and claim. From little more than P.T. Barnum's curiosity collection to full displays of massive dinosaurs. this accounting highlights the few who were monumental in this race and the sheer luck of finding these remains hidden in layers of rock and covering a vast wasteland. These dinosaur hunters braved unfriendly locals, horrific storms, unbelievable heat and cold not to mention the monumental job transporting the finds weighing tons back to New York. Full of adventure, the characters behind the scenes at the museums or personal collections and the men who risked everything for that one perfect skeleton, this is an interesting look at making science available to everyone. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Occasionally, I decide to switch from my typical fantasy/romance reads to something else. It seems nonfiction is what calls to me now.

Monster Bones 's inside cover explains it is about the discovery of the first T Rex skeleton. But really this book is about so much more. It's about a man who rises from a small farm, and find himself at the front of incredible discovery after discovery. It's about a museum that fights to find its place in the big city. It's about political posturing, money, and the fight for equality.

I have never really though about what people thought about fossils, before the term fossils came to be. I had never thought about a world before dinosaurs, and how the discovery wouldn't have just rattled paleontology - but the whole world.
This book dives into not only the search for dinosaurs, but also the people who were at the forefront. This is the second book I've read about dinosuars in recent years, and I have to say, both times the people have been described in vivid detail. I feel I got to know each person - their beliefs, their aspirations and their flaws. This book also explores the state of the world, and how it influenced people's interpretation of the fossils, and the knowledge it provided. I didn't realize racism was so closely tied to the history of dinosuars being Unearthed.


I am usually a pretty fast reader- but this book had a lot of information and it was slow to digest. It was an interesting read though! I reccomend it

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

> Studies now suggest that 20,000 adult T. rex lived in North America at any given time. Over the 2.4 million years it was in existence, a total of some 2.5 billion adult T. rex walked the Earth. Given that paleontologists now estimate that only one out of every 80 million T. rex that ever lived was fossilized, Brown’s discovery of three of them becomes all the more astounding.

> “More is going on now than ever,” Philip J. Currie, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta, told the New York Times. “There were probably only six of us in the world who were paid,” he said, to focus solely on the study of dinosaurs when he began in the 1970s, adding, “Right now, there’s maybe 150,” along with a “colossal increase in the number of scientific papers.”

> “People who study non-dinosaurs say dinosaurs get all the attention,” said Stephen Bursatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. “People who study dinosaurs say theropods get all the attention. People who study theropods say, oh, tyrannosaurs get all the attention.”

> For thirty years, the American Museum of Natural History was the only place in the world where someone could view a T. rex.

[Shelby Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

REALLY interesting book on the politics of paleontology and how dinosaurs have shaped museums even to this day. I am certainly the problem when I walk into a natural history museum and beeline straight to the dinosaur section, but now I know a bit more of the history of them. Anyone up for a trip to the American Museum of Natural History?

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book about the history of paleontology. More specifically, how discoveries of dinosaur bones changed how we look at the history of this planet. As someone who is fascinated by dinosaurs and fossils, reading this book os quite enjoyable.

[Nostalgia Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weaves the history of paleontology and fossils with a captivating biography and history of Barnum Brown's excavation adventures.

[Hilary (Melted Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pretty interesting! Not my favorite audiobook narrator (a bit stilted), but the writing was quite engrossing. Some especially thought-provoking parts for me:
- geology and paleontology were not always respected fields; in fact, it seemed normal for geological study to be openly stifled by pro-Christian theorists in academia
- there didn't seem to be a lot of red tape to get through in order to dig up random land in the U.S. in the hope of finding bones; if you had the money to do it, you could go for it (sigh...the entitlement...)
- I appreciated the frequent mention of the fact that many preeminent scientists concerned in this book (1800s to early 1900s) were racist and pro-eugenics; this offered a good critical lens for the text

[Amy!]

My review on StoryGraph.

[Rivka · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a topic that I thought would actually be pretty dry, this book was told in such an engaging way that I finished it in two days. I leave it feeling enriched and also with a renewed interest in archaeology. 10/10 no notes.

[Kinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read; when the first Tyrannosaurus rex was discovered it really changed the whole mood of the book, just like it changed how we perceived the dinosaurs back then.

The discovery included a lot of politics and powerhouses, but I’m happy that we got to know Barnum Brown and his will to never stop taking part in adventures.