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

The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World PDF Author: David K. Randall
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324006544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
A Science Friday Best Book to Read This Summer A gripping narrative of a fearless paleontologist, the founding of America’s most loved museums, and the race to find the largest dinosaurs on record. 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.

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

The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World PDF Author: David K. Randall
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324006544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book

Book Description
A Science Friday Best Book to Read This Summer A gripping narrative of a fearless paleontologist, the founding of America’s most loved museums, and the race to find the largest dinosaurs on record. 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.

The Monster's Bones (Young Readers Edition): The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World

The Monster's Bones (Young Readers Edition): The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World PDF Author: David K. Randall
Publisher: WW Norton
ISBN: 1324015519
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
The thrilling tale of America’s early paleontologists and the discovery of the first T. Rex fossil, now adapted for young readers. From the dust of the Gilded Age Bone Wars, two vastly different men emerge to fill the empty halls of New York’s struggling American Museum of Natural History: socialite Henry Fairfield Osborn and intrepid fossil hunter Barnum Brown. When Brown unearths the first Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils, Osborn sees a path to save his museum from irrelevancy. 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 turn dinosaurs into a beloved part of culture. In this vivid and engaging young readers adaptation, New York Times best-selling author David K. Randall journeys from prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the unforgiving Badlands of the American West to the penthouses of Manhattan. The Monster’s Bones reveals how a monster of a bygone era ignited a new understanding of our planet and our place within it.

Bone Wars

Bone Wars PDF Author: Tom Rea
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298847X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
With a New Foreword by Matthew C. Lamanna and a New Afterword by Tom Rea Less than one hundred years ago, Diplodocus carnegii—named after industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie—was the most famous dinosaur on the planet. The most complete fossil skeleton unearthed to date, and one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered, Diplodocus was displayed in a dozen museums around the world and viewed by millions of people. Bone Wars explains how a fossil unearthed in the badlands of Wyoming in 1899 helped give birth to the public’s fascination with prehistoric beasts. Rea also traces the evolution of scientific thought regarding dinosaurs and reveals the double-crosses and behind-the-scenes deals that marked the early years of bone hunting. With the help of letters found in scattered archives, Tom Rea recreates a remarkable story of hubris, hope, and turn-of-the-century science. He focuses on the roles of five men: Wyoming fossil hunter Bill Reed; paleontologists Jacob Wortman—in charge of the expedition that discovered Carnegie’s dinosaur—and John Bell Hatcher; William Holland, imperious director of the recently founded Carnegie Museum; and Carnegie himself, smitten with the colossal animals after reading a story in the New York Journal and Advertiser. What emerges is the picture of an era reminiscent of today: technology advancing by leaps and bounds; the press happy to sensationalize anything that turned up; huge amounts of capital ending up in the hands of a small number of people; and some devoted individuals placing honest research above personal gain.

Barnum Brown

Barnum Brown PDF Author: Lowell Dingus
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520272617
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
From his stunning discovery of Tyrannosaurus rex one hundred years ago to the dozens of other important new dinosaur species he found, Barnum Brown led a remarkable life (1873–1963), spending most of it searching for fossils—and sometimes oil—in every corner of the globe. One of the most famous scientists in the world during the middle of the twentieth century, Brown—who lived fast, dressed to the nines, gambled, drank, smoked, and was known as a ladies’ man—became as legendary as the dinosaurs he uncovered. Barnum Brown brushes off the loose sediment to reveal the man behind the legend. Drawing on Brown’s field correspondence and unpublished notes, and on the writings of his daughter and his two wives, it discloses for the first time details about his life and travels—from his youth on the western frontier to his spying for the U.S. government under cover of his expeditions. This absorbing biography also takes full measure of Brown’s extensive scientific accomplishments, making it the definitive account of the life and times of a singular man and a superlative fossil hunter.

My Beloved Brontosaurus

My Beloved Brontosaurus PDF Author: Brian Switek
Publisher: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466836768
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
A Hudson Booksellers Staff Pick for the Best Books of 2013 One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Spring Science Books A Bookshop Santa Cruz Staff Pick Dinosaurs, with their awe-inspiring size, terrifying claws and teeth, and otherworldly abilities, occupy a sacred place in our childhoods. They loom over museum halls, thunder through movies, and are a fundamental part of our collective imagination. In My Beloved Brontosaurus, the dinosaur fanatic Brian Switek enriches the childlike sense of wonder these amazing creatures instill in us. Investigating the latest discoveries in paleontology, he breathes new life into old bones. Switek reunites us with these mysterious creatures as he visits desolate excavation sites and hallowed museum vaults, exploring everything from the sex life of Apatosaurus and T. rex's feather-laden body to just why dinosaurs vanished. (And of course, on his journey, he celebrates the book's titular hero, "Brontosaurus"—who suffered a second extinction when we learned he never existed at all—as a symbol of scientific progress.) With infectious enthusiasm, Switek questions what we've long held to be true about these beasts, weaving in stories from his obsession with dinosaurs, which started when he was just knee-high to a Stegosaurus. Endearing, surprising, and essential to our understanding of our own evolution and our place on Earth, My Beloved Brontosaurus is a book that dinosaur fans and anyone interested in scientific progress will cherish for years to come.

Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep

Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep PDF Author: David K. Randall
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039308020X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Journalist David K. Randall examines the science behind sleep.

Dinomania

Dinomania PDF Author: Boria Sax
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789140153
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
From Jurassic Park to Sue the T-Rex and Barney, our dino love affair is as real, as astonishing, and as incomprehensible as the gargantuan beasts themselves. At once reptilian and avian, dinosaurs enable us to imagine a world far beyond the usual boundaries of time, culture, and physiology. We envision them in diverse and contradictory ways, from purple friends to toothy terrors—reflecting, in part, our changing conceptions of ourselves. Not unlike humans today, dinosaurs seem at once powerful, almost godly, and helpless in the face of cosmic forces even more powerful than themselves. In Dinomania, Boria Sax, a leading authority on human-animal relations, tells the story of our unlikely romance with the titanic saurians, from the discovery of their enormous bones—relics of an ancient world—to the dinosaur theme parks of today. That discovery, around the start of the nineteenth century, was intimately tied to our growing awareness of geological time and the dawn of the industrial era. Dinosaurs’ vast size and power called to mind railroads, battleships, and factories, making them, paradoxically, emblems of modernity. But at the same time, their world was nature at its most pristine and unsullied, the perfect symbol of childhood innocence and wonder. Sax concludes that in our imaginations dinosaurs essentially are, and always have been, dragons; and as we enter a new era of environmental threats in which dinos provide us a way to confront indirectly the possibility of human extinction, their representation is again blending with the myth and legend from which it emerged at the start of the modern age. Fun and ferocious, and featuring many superb illustrations of dinosaurs from art, popular culture, film, and advertising, Dinomania is a thought-provoking homage to humanity's enduring dinosaur amour.

The Terrible Lizard

The Terrible Lizard PDF Author: Deborah Cadbury
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780805070873
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
In 1812, the skeleton of a monster was discovered beneath the cliffs of Dorset, setting in motion a collision between science and religion, and among scientists eager to claim supremacy in a brand-new field. For Reverend William Buckland, an eccentric naturalist at Oxford University, the fossil remains of a creature that existed before Noah's flood inspired an attempt to prove the accuracy of the biblical record. Novelist Gideon Mantell also became obsessed with the ancient past, and eminent anatomist Richard Owen soon entered the fray, claiming credit for the discovery of the dinosaurs. In a fast-paced narrative, Terrible Lizard re-creates the bitter feud between Mantell and Owen. Revealing a strange, awesome prehistoric era, their struggle set the stage for Darwin's shattering theories -- and for controversies that still rage today.

Paleontology

Paleontology PDF Author: David Bainbridge
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691235929
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
An illustrated look at the art and science of paleontology from its origins to today Humans have been stumbling upon the petrified remains of ancient animals since prehistoric times, leading to tales of giant dogs, deadly dragons, tree gods, sea serpents, and all manner of strange and marvelous creatures. In this richly illustrated book, David Bainbridge recounts how legends like these gradually gave rise to the modern science of paleontology, and how this pioneering discipline has reshaped our view of the natural world. Bainbridge takes readers from ancient Greece to the eighteenth century, when paleontology began to coalesce into the scientific field we know today, and discusses how contemporary paleontologists use cutting-edge technologies to flesh out the discoveries of past and present. He brings to life the stories and people behind some of the greatest fossil finds of all time, and explains how paleontology has long straddled the spheres of science and art. Bainbridge also looks to the future of the discipline, discussing how the rapid recovery of DNA and other genetic material from the fossil record promises to revolutionize our understanding of the origins and evolution of ancient life. This panoramic book brings together stunning illustrations ranging from early sketches and engravings to eye-popping paleoart and high-tech computer reconstructions.

Rex Appeal

Rex Appeal PDF Author: Peter Larson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781931229388
Category : Paleontologists
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
When Peter Larson and his team from the Black Hills Institute discovered the world's largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton beneath a South Dakota butte in 1990, they had no idea that it would be the find of a lifetime. Sue, as the skeleton came to be known, would ultimately not only lead them to international recognition, but also pull them into a world of FBI investigations, Native American land claims, competitive paleontologists, and avaricious museum curators. This gripping story chronicles the adventures of Larson and his group, explaining the art, technology, and politics behind one of the most successful group of T-rex hunters.