About this item
"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" 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.
About the Author
Michael Taylor is an historian of colonial slavery, the British Empire and the British Isles. He graduated with a double first in history from the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD (2015) - and also won University Challenge. He has since been Lecturer in Modern British History at Balliol College, Oxford, and he is currently a Visiting Fellow at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies. (courtsey of
