Impossible Monsters

Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion

By: Michael Taylor

Narrated by: Michael Langan

"Vivid with a Mesozoic bestiary" (Tom Holland), this on-the-ground, must-listen 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" ichthyosaur, 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.

©2024 Michael Taylor (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Interesting but Slow

The narrator was annoying and had this habit of reading every quote in a breathy whisper. I finally listened at faster than normal speed and found that better. The book does effectively take you back to a time when people actually believed Bishop Usher. Scientists who were mostly dilettantes had a terrible time reconciling their discoveries with what everyone knew was true. As the science became harder to deny people had to rearrange their world view. It does make an interesting story.

Interesting

I liked this book, it gave me more insights into to history of dinosaurs and the people and the science of the study of dinosaurs.

Repetitive and not that interesting

Just didn’t get much out of this . Felt like each new scientist they explored was basically the same point being made again and again.