S8 Ep584: 1. David K. Randall, *The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World*. Barnum Brown, born in 1873, was named after showman P.T. Barnum after his brother visited a traveling fair. A formative 2,000-mile trip with his father introdu
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John Batchelor
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🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
1. David K. Randall, *The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World*. Barnum Brown, born in 1873, was named after showman P.T. Barnum after his brother visited a traveling fair. A formative 2,000-mile trip with his father introduced him to the changing nature of the Earth and the vastness of the American West. Later, at the University of Kansas, he studied under Professor Williston, a veteran of the legendary "bone wars" between Marsh and Cope. Brown excelled in the field due to his physical strength, survival skills, and remarkable patience while extracting fossils. His talent earned him the nickname "Mr. Bones" and led to a prestigious invitation to join Henry Fairfield Osborne’s team in New York. (1)
1911
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:09.0 | This is CBS, I on the World. I'm John Batchelor. It is the spring of 1900. Barnum Brown arrives in New York City from Patagonia. |
| 0:21.4 | This is the tale of the search for the Tyrannosaurus rex. |
| 0:26.8 | The T. rex now displayed at the American Museum of Natural History has a backstory. |
| 0:32.9 | And a wonderful new book, The Monster's Bones, the discovery of T-Rex and How It Shook Our World. |
| 0:40.0 | David K. Randall is the author. He works at Reuters, but in his day job, but in his night |
| 0:46.7 | job, he travels like Arthur Conn Doyle and the scientist Challenger to search out the T-Rex, |
| 0:54.0 | the origin of T-Rex, and how it is that we the T-Rex, the origin of T-Rex, |
| 0:55.4 | and how it is that we have T-Rex as the apex predator, |
| 1:00.8 | whoever lived on the planet Earth. |
| 1:03.5 | David, congratulations and good evening to you, and thank you very much. |
| 1:07.7 | Barnum Brown arrived from Patagonia, where he's been searching for bones. Immediately, |
| 1:13.2 | he's turned around and sent back out by the American Museum of Natural History, because there is a |
| 1:18.9 | bones race, which I think of as a moon race or an Arctic race underway, between museums and collections. |
| 1:31.2 | The Carnegie Museum and Andrew Carnegie himself, the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, the fields of Chicago, and Yale and Princeton. |
| 1:38.5 | This race underway, it's been building for 70, 80 years. |
| 1:43.2 | Is it always in the news? |
| 1:44.5 | Are we just seeing something special that later explodes? |
| 1:48.2 | Good evening to you, David. |
| 1:50.3 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:51.7 | So this was a time where dinosaurs were relatively new. |
| 1:55.5 | The concept that the Earth had a much longer history than anyone had ever considered was still |
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