S8 Ep584: 3. David K. Randall, *The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T-Rex and How It Shook Our World*. This source describes the intense "bones race" between major museums and their wealthy financiers, such as J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. These titans of indu
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John Batchelor
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🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
3. David K. Randall, *The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T-Rex and How It Shook Our World*. This source describes the intense "bones race" between major museums and their wealthy financiers, such as J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. These titans of industry sought massive dinosaur fossils to bolster their own prestige and increase public interest in their institutions. Henry Osborne, the director of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History, felt immense pressure to find "monster" specimens to make the museum relevant to the city’s population. At the time, the museum was an isolated building that struggled to connect with visitors. Brown’s relentless searching eventually provided the sensational exhibits necessary to transform the museum into a major cultural attraction. (3)
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS, I in the World. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm John Batchel with David Randall. |
| 0:08.0 | David K. Randall's new book is The Monster's Bones, the discovery of T-Rex, and how it shook our world. |
| 0:15.0 | We're following our protagonist, our hero, Mr. Bones, Barnum Brown. He has been dispatched by his superior at the American Museum of Natural History |
| 0:26.6 | to go out west and find me bigger and bigger monster bones. |
| 0:31.6 | We're in competition with Carnegie himself. |
| 0:34.6 | I must deliver eyeballs. I must get people into this museum. In 1901, he goes, in |
| 0:41.3 | 1900, he goes to Wyoming. In 1901, he goes to Colorado. These are okay expeditions, but they're |
| 0:50.0 | not what they need. They're not something new. They're not something that they can use the word |
| 0:55.8 | monster and convince the newspaper writers who are following this bones race that's underway. Now we |
| 1:03.2 | come to 1902 and like a great Hollywood mystery, there's a photograph, a man named Hornaday, |
| 1:10.5 | who eventually becomes, I believe, the |
| 1:12.9 | Bronx Zoo sponsor, and a photograph taken by a man named Sieber. Who is Seber? Who is Hornaday? |
| 1:20.8 | And how do these clues come to Barnum Brown, David? So Hornaday is traveling through Montana, |
| 1:26.8 | and this is a time when Montana is pretty much |
| 1:30.9 | as far away from the life of the East Coast as you can think. It really feels like it's a different |
| 1:37.6 | world. Essentially, you're traveling to Australia or something. And Hornetay is out there to document |
| 1:43.0 | some of the life, deer and other life, natural life, that he comes across. And Hornetay is out there to document some of the life, deer and other life, |
| 1:45.6 | natural life, that he comes across. And he reaches a farm of a man named Max Seber. And Seber says, |
| 1:54.2 | you know, if you're looking for natural life, you should see. That's what I have out here. And he |
| 1:59.7 | takes them to, it takes a picture of what looks to be a triceratops skull. |
| 2:03.6 | And this is something that is of great interest when Hordiday comes back to the American |
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