Michael Crichton, the number one New York Times best-selling author of Jurassic Park, returns to the world of palaeontology in this recently discovered novel - a thrilling adventure set in the Wild West during the golden age of fossil hunting.

The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America's western territories, even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. Against this backdrop two palaeontologists pillage the Wild West for dinosaur fossils while deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars.

Into this treacherous territory plunges William Johnson, a Yale student with more privilege than sense. Determined to win a bet against his archrival, William has joined world-renowned palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh on his latest expedition. But Marsh becomes convinced that William is spying for his nemesis, Edwin Drinker Cope, and abandons him in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a locus of crime and vice.

Soon William joins forces with Cope and stumbles upon a discovery of historic proportions. The struggle to protect this extraordinary treasure, however, will test William's newfound resilience and pit him against some of the West's most dangerous and notorious characters....