From prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the unforgiving badlands of the American West to the penthouses of Manhattan, this riveting narrative follows a fearless paleontologist who, after unearthing the first T-Rex fossils, saved NY's struggling American Museum of Natural History. When Barnum Brown unearthed the first Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils in the Montana wilderness, it forever changed the world of paleontology. Henry Fairfield Osborn saw 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 suggested a prehistoric ecosystem more complex than anyone at the time had imagined. As the public turned 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 turned dinosaurs from a biological oddity into a beloved part of culture. Randall journeys from prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the unforgiving badlands of the American West to the penthouses of Manhattan, with a cast of robber barons, eugenicists, and opportunistic cowboys. He reveals how a monster of a bygone era ignited a new understanding of our planet and our place within it. -- adapted from jacket

Prologue: The center of the world -- A life that could contain him -- A world previous to our -- Scraping the surface -- Creatures equally colossal and equally strange -- Empty rooms -- A real adventure -- Finding a place in the world -- The uttermost part of the Earth -- Big things -- A very costly season -- The bones of the king -- New beginnings -- The hardest work he could find -- A new world -- The monster unveiled -- A second chance -- The monster's tracks.