Mythical Monsters

A winged reptile with a span of nearly twenty-five feet sounds like a dragon—until Charles Gould points to its fossil bones. Could the monsters in old tales be memories of creatures that really lived?

Writing in the age of spectacular fossil discoveries, Gould brings the worlds of natural history and ancient legend into unsettling proximity. He begins with the reptile forms known to science: flying creatures with pointed heads, and sea-dwelling giants whose remains seem to match the old image of a serpent in the water. The question is not simply whether dragons, unicorns, or sea-serpents are possible, but whether stories preserve distorted traces of real animals—and what evidence can tell us. How much of the fabulous might have begun in the fossil record?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.