Barnum Brown in 1919, four years after the first full T. rex specimen was revealed in New York City. He often joked that he lost his hair as a young man after encountering a mountain lion in a cave in Patagonia.
Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1890, shortly before he joined the fledgling American Museum of Natural History in New York. The son of a powerful railroad executive, he saw building the museum’s collection of dinosaurs as a way to maintain the family prestige.
Well before they knew their lives would be integrally intertwined, Brown and Osborn met in the badlands of Wyoming when Brown uncovered the bones of a Diplodocus, the first dinosaur speci- men in the American Museum’s collection.
A view of the American Museum from the rooftop of the newly opened Dakota Building in 1880. The museum would eventually grow to encompass twenty-six interconnected buildings spanning across four city blocks.
Brown holds the reins as a team of horses hauls T. rex fossils weighing over 4,100 pounds out of a quarry in Hell Creek, Montana, in 1905. Brown discovered the first T. rex specimen in the same quarry three years earlier.
Brown (right) helps hoist the pelvis of a T. rex specimen he discovered in Montana into a crate to ship to the American Museum in 1908. The fossils are covered in plaster to protect them until they reach the museum, where the years-long process of mounting them onto an armature will begin.
For thirty years, the American Museum of Natural History was the only place in the world where someone could view a T. rex. After Brown found multiple specimens, the museum briefly considered building an exhibit featuring two of the monsters fighting over prey, as depicted in this 1912 model, but scrapped it when it proved too large and unwieldy for the exhibition hall.
Despite severe nearsightedness that made him nearly blind, Charles R. Knight became one of the most influential museum artists of any era. This 1927 mural of a Triceratops facing off against a T. rex immersed the public in the prehistoric world and helped make T. rex the favorite villain of early Hollywood movies.
Brown, who grew up on a farm in Kansas, always hoped to become the cosmopolitan adventurer of his childhood dreams. Here he is shown wearing a fur coat while on a dig in Sweetwater, Montana, in 1914.
The T. rex, depicted here in its original “Godzilla pose” in 1960, soon became the most well- known dinosaur in the world and a fixture of everything from textbooks to breakfast cereals. In the early 1990s, staff at the museum repositioned the specimen in accordance with an updated scientific understanding so that its tail lifts off the ground and its head juts forward as if stalking its prey.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ESCAPING INTO DINOSAUR DIGS IN MONTANA—OR AT least pretending to—while working on this book was a welcome diversion as the coronavirus raced through New York City and its suburbs, an area that I now call home. Though libraries were closed and trips into the field canceled, a number of people continued to go out of their way to assist me in my attempt to tell the story of Barnum Brown and the monster he found.
The staff at the American Museum of Natural History were unfailingly helpful and courteous as I came back again and again with questions. Chief among them was Susan Bell, who opened the museum’s archives for me and spent several long afternoons in a stuffy records room located in the building’s attic while I paged through Barnum Brown’s papers and mice scurried past our feet. Dr. Mark Norrell, who, with Dr. Lowell Dingus, wrote a fantastic biography of Barnum Brown, extended his help in finding documents for my own work. And Matt Heenan, in the museum’s business office, made the process of finding and republishing photographs from the American Museum’s archives incredibly easy.
I would also like to thank several scholars whose work was invaluable to this project. Paul Brinkman uncovered a treasure trove of details of what he called the Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush, while Lukas Rieppel artfully examined how dinosaur fossils became a status symbol for Gilded Age tycoons. Adrienne Mayor’s work into how folklore incorporated fossils, meanwhile, helped provide a grounding for how humans interacted with dinosaurs before the advent of formalized science, and Deborah Cadbury’s work The Dinosaur Hunters helped flesh out the stories of early fossil hunters in England.
I am exceedingly fortunate to once again work with a team at W. W. Norton that was supportive of this project from the beginning and continued to make it better at every step of the way. My editor, Jill Bialosky, pushed me to go deeper into Brown’s character and offered innumerable suggestions along the way, which helped me get over whatever obstacle was in front of me. I am thankful that Allegra Huston, who copyedited this book, caught several typos and mistakes before they could make it into print and has the breadth of knowledge to both correct a reference to a poem by William Blake and ask if we should include a mention of a glam rock band. Steve Attardo and Faceout Studio conceived of a brilliant book jacket design, while Louise Brockett conjured the perfect subtitle. Drew Weitman, who helped the trains run on time, responded to every issue that came up with kindness and skill.
Special thanks also go to Larry Weissman and Sasha Alper, who helped shape this book back when it was just the wisp of an idea and wouldn’t rest until we got its wording just right, and Josie Freedman at CAA.
I am also fortunate to benefit from the support and company of Alan Yang, Jennifer Ablan, Lauren Young, Megan Davies, Dan Burns, Helen Coster, Sam Mamudi, Felix Gillette, John and Carol Ordover, Tony and Maryanne Petrizio, Robert, Gina and Gary Scott, Emily Davis and Ryan and Diane Randall.
And finally, infinite love and thanks go to Megan, Henry and Isla Randall, who made every day a good one regardless of how overwhelming the process of writing a book can sometimes feel. I am incredibly lucky to have you in my life.