Somewhere in the Badlands, embedded deep in centuries-buried rock and sand, lies the skeleton of a massive dinosaur, larger than anything the late nineteenth century world has ever seen. Some legends call it the Black Beauty, with its bones as black as ebony, but to seventeen-year-old Samuel Bolt it s the rex , the king dinosaur that could put him and his struggling, temperamental archaeologist father in the history books (and conveniently make his father forget he s been kicked out of school), if they can just quarry it out.