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

Written by David K. Randall

Narrated by Roman Howell

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781696608411

David K. Randall

David K. Randall is the New York Times bestselling author of four works of nonfiction, Dreamland, The King and Queen of Malibu, Black Death at the Golden Gate, and The Monster’s Bones. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. A senior reporter at Reuters, he lives in Montclair, NJ, with his family. 

Reviews for The Monster's Bones

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a fun read about the discovery of the T-Rex and the guy who found it. This was before Paleontology was a thing, bones discovered were either considered fakes, or animals who didn't make it on the ark. Nobody knew what to make of them, except that they were amazing, and they brought people into museums, another concept that was so very new at the time.

The story of Barnum Brown is an amazing one, growing up in a poor backwater, eventually making his way into the museum at New York, never quite fitting in with either crowd and always on the hunt for a new stomping ground to look for fossils. However, I found the story of how dinosaurs captured the American Imagination to be a more interesting story, from the Bone Wars, to the snobbery of the late 1800's.

[breic-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

> 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.

[quollden · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

They don’t find the T-Rex until the last 1/3 of the book. In the beginning of the book the author wonders ‘Who found these dinosaurs’ and yeah that ‘who’ is the focus for the book, not ‘these dinosaurs.’ It’s a LOT of biographical info about the people doing the fossil hunting. Quick surveys of other fossils, obligatory chapter about Cope & Marsh ‘Bone Wars,’ but focus is on who found the first T. Rex fossils. It’s a LOT of biographical info about the two main people who found and then displayed them. One of the men was ok but not compelling. The other man was a real jerk, personally and professionally, and a racist, a eugenicist, and he eventually supported the Nazis in the 1930’s so… it’s not like it’s much FUN to hear about him at length. The book does not get into the T. Rex - as an animal - very much. Does not cover what we learned about the T. Rex from each subsequent fossil specimen. After the initial discovery and display, all the other T. Rex fossils between 1905 and 1997 are skipped over. The Stan and Sue fossils get mentioned in the epilogue, but mostly just for their auction / prices.

Kinda feel like the movie trailer for this book could have gone like: “In an era… when everybody was a jerk… and ‘scientists’ paid cowboys to dynamite fossils out of quarries… One Man makes a living by finding fossils for the biggest jerk of them all…. And now… he’s found a fossil with the biggest teeth of them all…. Read about their empty and repetitive personal lives in excruciating detail… You’ll be looking askance at Natural History Museum administrators for months.”

[irishsue · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I am in awe of people who can look at a hill/creek bed and think: I should check this out. And they find dinosaur bones. Barnum Brown had that inate ability. It was so interesting to read about the nascent field of paleontology and how it intersected with theories on evolution. Makes me look at mountain sides and creek beds in a whole new way. It is a very readable book.

[montzaleew · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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!