“Vivid with a Mesozoic bestiary” (Tom Holland), this on-the-ground, page-turning narrative weaves together the chance discovery of dinosaurs and the rise of the secular age. When the twelve-year-old daughter of a British carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from the country’s southern shoreline in 1811, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had in fact discovered the “first” dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years―as the science of paleontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited radical new theories of evolutionary biology, and as scholars began to identify the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures―everything changed. Beginning with the archbishop who dated the creation of the world to 6 p.m. on October 22, 4004 BC, and told through the lives of the nineteenth-century men and women who found and argued about these seemingly impossible, history-rewriting fossils, Impossible Monsters reveals the central role of dinosaurs and their discovery in toppling traditional religious authority, and in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind’s place in the world. 40 illustrations

Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion

Taylor, Michael

BBC Physical Audio

BBC Digital Audio

BBC Large Print

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Impossible Monsters is the captivating story of the discovery of the dinosaurs and how it upended our understanding of the origins of the world.
'An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject' PETER FRANKOPAN
'As thrilling as it is sweeping' TOM HOLLAND
'The most talented young historian around ... A triumph' SATHNAM SANGHERA
In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain's southern shoreline. They belonged to no known creature and were buried beneath a hundred feet of rock. Over the next two decades, as several more of these 'impossible monsters' emerged from the soil, the leading scientists of the day were forced to confront a profoundly disturbing possibility: the Bible, as a historical account of the Earth's origins, was wildly wrong.
This is the dramatic story of the crisis that engulfed science and religion when we discovered the dinosaurs. It takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women who made these heretical discoveries, those who resisted them, as well as the pioneering thinkers, Darwin most famous among them, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth's and mankind's origins.
Impossible Monsters is the riveting story of a group of people who not only thought impossible things but showed them to be true. In the process they overturned the literal reading of the Bible, liberated science from the authority of religion and ushered in the secular age.
'Truly marvellous ... an intellectual thriller' RICHARD HOLMES
'A stunning work ... of surprises and revelations' STEVE BRUSATTE

2024-10-08