NATURAL MUSEUM WARS: 1/4: The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World Hardcover by David K. Randall (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Bones-Discovery-Shook-World/dp/1324006536
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone this is James Harkin and Anna Tashinsky two writers of the TV show |
| 0:05.2 | QI and two-fourths of the hit podcast no such thing as a fish. |
| 0:09.2 | We'd like to let you know that we've written a book it It is called everything to play for. The most |
| 0:14.4 | interesting things there are to know about the world of sports. It's for you |
| 0:18.2 | whether you like sports or not. Did you know that legendary cricketer Gary Sobers scored his final century while drunk? |
| 0:25.7 | Or that games of lacrosse used to involve 100,000 players. |
| 0:31.7 | Learn that and so much more by getting everything to play for, the QI Book of Sports, available |
| 0:36.2 | in all bookshops and online right now. This is CBS I on the World. |
| 0:45.0 | This is CBS I on the World. |
| 0:47.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:50.0 | This is CBS I in the World. I'm John Bachelor. It is the spring of 1900. Barnum Brown arrives in New York City from Patagonia. |
| 1:01.0 | This is the tale of the search for the Tyrannosaurus rex. |
| 1:06.6 | The T-Rex, now displayed at the American Museum of Natural History, has a backstory. In a wonderful new book, The Monsters Bones, the |
| 1:16.3 | discovery of T-Rex and how it shook our world. David K Randall is the author. He |
| 1:22.1 | works at Reuters but in his day job but in his night job |
| 1:26.7 | he travels like Arthur Conendoyle and the scientist Challenger to search out the T-Rex the origin of T-Rex and how it is that we |
| 1:36.4 | have T-Rex as the Apex Predator whoever lived on the planet Earth. David, congratulations and good evening to you and |
| 1:45.9 | thank you very much. Barnum Brown arrives from Patagonia where he's been searching |
| 1:51.0 | for bones. Immediately he's turned around and sent back out |
| 1:55.0 | by the American Museum of Natural History |
| 1:58.0 | because there is a bones race, |
| 2:00.0 | which I think of as a moon race |
... |
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