Philadelphia. The late 1870s. Home to the famous anatomist and surgeon Dr. Spencer Black. At Philadelphia's esteemed Academy of Medicine, he develops an unconventional hypothesis: What if the world's most celebrated mythological beasts - mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs - were in fact the evolutionary ancestors of humankind? The result is Black's magnum opus: The Codex Extinct Animalia, a Gray's Anatomy for mythological beasts, all rendered in meticulously detailed black-and-white anatomical illustrations. The Resurrectionist tells his story.