A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Smithsonian, The Times (London), Science Friday, Popular Mechanics, Science News, Library Journal, Booklist, Chicago Public Library

Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today the dinosaurs remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their thrilling, 200-million-year-long story as never before.

American paleontologist Steve Brusatte masterfully brings to life the lost world of the dinosaurs, illuminating their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Equally drawing on his own groundbreaking findings and the cutting-edge research of the women and men who are revolutionizing our understanding of these astonishing creatures, Brusatte’s captivating narrative—generously illustrated with original drawings and photographs—traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers in the Triassic period into the dominant array of species that arose during the dinosaurs’ peak.

In the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, thousands of species thrived, including T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, Velociraptor, and more, as well as winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds. The story dramatically concludes at the end of the Cretaceous, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in Earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”