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Title details for The Monster's Bones by David K. Randall - Available

The Monster's Bones

The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World

by David K. Randall
Roman Howell
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
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 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 twenty-five 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. The Monster's Bones journeys from prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the 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 bestselling author David K. Randall reveals how a monster of a bygone era ignited a new understanding of our planet and our place within it.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 7, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781696608411
      • File size: 265895 KB
      • Duration: 09:13:56

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      September 1, 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

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      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

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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