On the bottom of the icy sea off Nantucket lies the battered remains of the Italian luxury liner, Andrea Doria. Was the sinking deliberate? There are a few that know within its bowels rests a priceless pre-Columbian antiquity -- a treasure that now holds the key to a puzzle that is costing people their lives.

The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America’s western territories even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. In much of the country it is still illegal to espouse evolution. Against this backdrop two monomaniacal paleontologists pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars. Into this treacherous...