"THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY," hails Scientific American: A
thrilling new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest
young scientists.
"A masterpiece of science writing." --Washington Post
A New York Times Bestseller - Goodreads Choice Awards Winner -
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Smithsonian, Science Friday, The
Times (London), Popular Mechanics, Science News
"This is scientific storytelling at its most visceral, striding with the
beasts through their Triassic dawn, Jurassic dominance, and abrupt
demise in the Cretaceous." --Nature
The dinosaurs. Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth's most fearsome
creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet's great
mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their
extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before.
In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original
illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American
paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the
field--naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific
studies and fieldwork--masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and
new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to
dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their
enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity,
cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and
revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.
Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start
as small shadow dwellers--themselves the beneficiaries of a mass
extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic
period--into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child
memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This
gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs' peak during the
Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged
and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds,
emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, 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."
Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting
expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur
research--which he calls "a new golden age of discovery"--and offers
thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his
colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs;
monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting
feathered raptors from China.
An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs' epic
saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and
treasured account for decades to come.
Includes 75 images, world maps of the prehistoric earth, and a
dinosaur family tree.
