Impossible Monsters: How the Discovery of Dinosaurs Changed the World

Impossible Monsters is the captivating story of the discovery of the dinosaurs and how it upended our understanding of the origins of the world.



In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline - and so sparked a crisis that would engulf science and religion for the next six decades. By its end, the literal reading of the Bible had been overturned, science had been liberated from religion and the secular age had begun. Impossible Monsters takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women whose discovery of the dinosaurs revolutionised our understanding of the world, as well as those who resisted them and those, like Charles Darwin, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth’s and mankind’s origins. It is the riveting story of a group of people who dared to think impossible things and then showed them to be true.

Review

One of the most interesting stories in the world . . . brilliant . . . told with brio and humour, but not without a sense of the pathos of Doubt . . . I relished every word -- A. N. Wilson ― Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year

Excellent . . . Everything that popular scholarly history should be . . . written with clarity, zest, and wit -- Piers Brendon ― Literary Review

Impossible Monsters captivatingly outlines how the unearthing of strange bones toppled traditional understanding of the origins of the world . . . rather miraculous -- Roger Lewis ― Telegraph ****

Marvellous . . . Impossible Monsters is a work of remarkable range. Taylor . . . belongs to that rare class of writers who can effortlessly encompass both scientific arcana and intellectual currents. It is also to his credit that he every so often takes us away from the high tables to show us what ordinary people made of these huge strides in thinking -- Pratinav Anil ― Guardian

Eminently readable and well-researched . . . He writes well, knows his subject and has a fine eye for detail ― Spectator

Such an attractive book . . . a sympathetic, charming, beautifully written guide through a pivotal part of history -- John van Whye ― BBC History Magazine

In writing Impossible Monsters, the task of Michael Taylor . . . was to tell a much-told tale better than it had been told before. He has succeeded splendidly . . . Mr Taylor also conveys a sense of just how risky it was to believe in and promulgate the new ideas tied to the rocks and tropical forests where people hunted for specimens ― Economist

Skilfully blends an impressive array of sources into a highly readable, almost novelistic narrative. In particular, it features many women who played crucial roles but are too often invisible . . . Including gripping tales as well as serious commentary, Impossible Monsters chips out a fascinating slice through the strata of Victorian society ― History Today

The emotional impact on the Victorians . . . was profound . . . Taylor recounts not just the interventions of palaeontologists and geologists but also those stricken by events as their faith evaporated . . . he marshals his cast expertly and shows lucidly why it mattered so much ― New Statesman

This book confirms what I've suspected for a while, that Michael Taylor is the most talented young historian around. This book dazzles in its originality and there is something you want to commit to memory on every page. A triumph -- SATHNAM SANGERA, author of Empireworld

About the Author

Michael Taylor is the author of The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2021, chosen as a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year and described as 'riveting' (The Times) and 'compulsively readable' (Guardian). He was born in 1988 and graduated with a double first in history from the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD. He has since been Lecturer in Modern British History at Balliol College, Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies.