Impossible Monsters

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
'This book dazzles in its originality . . . 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

*Chosen by the Times Literary Supplement, Waterstones and Bloomberg as a Book of the Year 2024*