Impossible Monsters:
Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion
by Michael Taylor
Penguin, 496 pages, £25
Human beings have existed on this planet for many millennia. But only in the 19th century was the startling truth about the history of the world and our origins gradually uncovered. The story of how these profound changes in our understanding unfolded is sadly not as well known today as it should be. Enter Michael Taylor’s new book, Impossible Monsters.
As Taylor sets out, Charles Darwin did not present the theory of evolution to a public that was horrified at the idea that the world was not 6,000 years old and that living things had not been created by God all at once. Educated people already knew this. Geology and palaeontology were the hottest sciences in the early 19th century. The cumulative investigation of the Earth – and an ever burgeoning haul of fossils – ensured that the story of the Earth’s history was essentially the same in outline back then as it is today.