Steve Brusatte

Rise & Fall Of The Dinosaurs

"THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY," hails Scientific American: A thrilling new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists. A New York Times Bestseller • Goodreads Choice Awards WINNER A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Smithsonian, NPR Science Friday, The Times (London), Popular Mechanics, Science News, Library Journal, Booklist, and Chicago Public Library "A masterpiece of science writing." —Washington Post "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.

A New History of a Lost World

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

Very interesting. I learned a lot about dinosaurs, but also about paleontology and how it has evolved. The book is written in a really casual way, and has a lot of stories of paleontologists out in the field and in the lab.

Eduardo Sorribas

"THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY," hails Scientific American: A thrilling new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists. A New York Times Bestseller • Goodreads Choice Awards WINNER A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Smithsonian, NPR Science Friday, The Times (London), Popular Mechanics, Science News, Library Journal, Booklist, and Chicago Public Library "A masterpiece of science writing." —Washington Post "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.

Patrick Book

This is mega-fascinating. Not just for dinosaur nerds either! It’s an accessible rundown of where our understanding of dinosaurs and their extinction lies now, which is light years ahead of what I remember learning as a kid. A lot of this info is absolutely fascinating and it’s presented in a terrific, straightforward way. Brusatte has a knack for mixing dramatic and eye-catching storytelling with just enough science/theory/process to ensure the reader really gets what he’s putting down. I loved it!

Andrew Reeves

Was basically everything you could hope for in a dinosaur book for the lab reader. Well done!

Hanna Rybchynska

Great overview about dinosaurs, highly recommend it.

Tuago

Fascinating to learn more about dinosaurs and what is left of them in our current world (spoiler alert: birds!). Very interesting writing and geared towards complete beginners to the topic.

66 million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth. Today a new generation of dinosaur hunters, armed with cutting edge technology, is piecing together the complete story of how the dinosaurs created a hugely successful empire that lasted for around 150 million years.In this hugely ambitious and engrossing story of how dinosaurs rose to dominate the planet, using the fossil clues that have been gathered using state of the art technology, Steve Brusatte, one of the world's leading paleontologists, follows these magnificent creatures from the Early Triassic period at the start of their evolution, through the Jurassic period to their final days in the Cretaceous' and the legacy that they left behind.Along the way, Brusatte introduces us to the cast of new dinosaur hunters and gives an insight into what it's like to be a paleontologist whose job it is to hunt for dinosaurs. He offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable discoveries he has made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs, monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex, and feathered raptor dinosaurs preserved in lava from China.At a time when Homo sapiens has existed for less than 200,000 years and we are already talking about planetary extinction, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a timely reminder of what humans can learn from the magnificent creatures who ruled the earth before us.

The Untold Story of a Lost World

Jamieson

I was a dinosaur obsessed kid. I watched the entire Land Before Time series, many many times, and would rewatch BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs so often that I can still quote large segments of it verbatim despite not having watched it for over a decade. 

I didn't know about this book until it won the Goodreads Choice Award for best non-fiction in 2018, and I knew I had to read it. Even though my obsession with Dinosaurs has faded, I still find the humongous animals that roamed the earth we stand on right now so freakin fascinating. They seem so alien and out of this world, its hard to really fully process they very much were alive and thriving 150 million years ago. 

The information in this book was definitely interesting - when it related to the Dinosaurs. Research indicating Dinosaurs had feathers, information on new species such as a bad winged Dinosaur, crucial to understanding how Dinosaurs evolved into todays birds, explanations of how we know what colours Dinosaurs are, and conclusive proof that it was an asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs for good. 

But that was kind of outweighed by the author - who was often incredibly annoying and injected his own story and relationships into the story way too often. He's like that guy in your class who is absolutely desperate for everyone to know he is, in fact, the smartest person in the room. The way he name dropped colleagues was not only annoying, but also confusing, as all the names got jumbled into one (and I was expected to remember them despite only being mentioned once 500 pages ago). The sexism also was a bit off-putting, especially one section that made me actually cringe - where the author gleefully recounts a palaeontologist event where the speaker spent his time talking about the bodies of female palaeontologists and talking about how many he had slept with. It reeked of the awkward nerdy boy in high school who said awful things about women to try and sound cooler but just ended up sounding like a dick everyone hated. 

If you want to know about Dinosaurs, including so much emerging research you definitely would not have heard about before I do recommend this - but go into it with a huge grain of salt because the author was A Lot in my opinion. I couldn't skip his personal stories on the audiobook, but I would do that if you're reading physically.

Now, enjoy this picture of T-Rex drawn with the feathers they absolutely had

Liv Strefford

This book is a brilliant insight into a whole new prehistoric world, filled to the brim with incredible facts and photos and written by an expert in the field

What I love about this book is that it gives dinosaurs the limelight, but also explains a lot about the environment and landscape of the earth millions of years ago, detailing how it changed through each era and how this influenced the evolution of dinosaurs and helped them in their way to world domination 

The book explains how the famous dinosaurs you know and love (t.Rex, velociraptor, diplodocus) evolved over millions of years from very different animals, there’s so much more to learn about the genealogy and phylogeny of these species and how they are all related. For example, you may also be surprised to find out that the well-known T.Rex was not even fully evolved during the Jurassic period- most of the well known dinos coexisted in the Cretaceous period! Even more interesting is how the dinosaurs are related to species living on our Earth today - birds! And how the ancestors of crocodiles competed with dinosaurs in their early days!

Rise & Fall of the Dinosaurs also gives a great insight into what it’s like to be a paleontologist, or essentially, a dinosaur hunter. Brusatte explains how methods of studying fossils have developed over time and how this has changed our understanding of how dinosaurs lived and behaved. 

This book is well written, with facts that are well spread out so that you don’t feel like its an info dump and can actually digest all the information. Brusatte also uses lots of comparisons to modern animals and anecdotes to help you to understand topics that are fairly complex to the average person.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and learnt a lot. I especially liked how well-rounded it was, incorporating information about all parts of the prehistoric world to make you fully understand the world that dinosaurs lived in. 

Rating - 8/10

A New History of Their Lost World

Risa C

The concept of mass extinction has fascinated me and fed on my existential horror for a long while now. That human existence is one microscopic drop in the incomprehensibly vast ocean of this planet's history sometimes drowns me in the insignificance of our species and the inevitability of its end, with us unable to kick our feet fast enough to break through a surface that will always remain out of reach. Still, the idea that this is all finite and that human greed is probably hastening our collective demise also brings with it a sense of peace, an acceptance that the earth is our final master, no matter how many centuries of industrial subjugation, and, at least for me, a burning desire to read more and more on this topic.

"The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" is more rise than fall. It's more a hagiography to the T. Rex and a few of the other chumps living alongside it than the extinction horror story that I wanted it to be. But I enjoy reading non-fiction science books to learn new things and this book was full of new, eye-opening bits of knowledge.

My pedestrian view of the ancient world had dinosaurs as the focal point of my tunnel vision; it never really occurred to me that other creatures had existed with them, and even before them. The diverse and complex ecosystems of the Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods played out like otherworldly tableaus on a fictional planet in my mind, populated with animals that our modern sensibilities could never dream up. I also especially liked the chapter that discussed the idea that birds are dinosaurs, a concept I'd heard about previously, but never studied in detail.

However, I'm not the biggest fan of how the book was written. Brusatte can write a really good disaster scene, but the field notes portions of the book dragged on for me. He also name drops a lot of paleontologists, who I'm sure are very important and credible scientists, but I could have done without his weirdly reductive descriptions of their physical attributes and idiosyncrasies. Also, Brusatte is a scientist before he is a writer, and explanations of a lot of the complex methods used by paleontologists to construct dinosaur family trees or recreate dinosaur morphology flew right over my head.

What I will say though, is that Brusatte's passion and love for dinosaurs clearly shines through his writing. He has written an engaging, mostly accessible book that I would have no reservations recommending to anyone even the slightest bit interested in dinosaurs and the ancient world they inhabited.

Kate Gravelle

Super sciencey book but told in a relatable way!

Neva Davies

"We humans now wear the crown that once belonged to the dinosaurs. We are confident of our place in nature, even as our actions are rapidly changing the planet around us.... if it could happen to the dinosaurs, could it also happen to us?" 

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte spans the beginning of the reign of the dinosaurs and then talks about their inevitable end. It's an important read because as we learn more about the dinosaurs, we learn that there's still so much we don't know. This book helps to put the pieces we do already know together into a cohesive skeleton, complete with pictures. I recommend it to everyone who grew up loving dinosaurs, and to everyone who are interested in simply learning more.

Sonja

He definitely knew what he was talking about and the information itself he was giving was extremely interesting, I found.
But I cringed a little bit every time he tried to write a fictional scene and he confused me every time he just listed names of people he worked with. Names, names and names. With every name I cared less.

Suliman ahmed

It starts of slow and then picks up halfway through with some pages still a slow read. It depends on what you want to read if you want to know the players in paleontology or some of their stories then you'll probably enjoy this book more than me. The book takes us on an exploration of the different stages of the age of dinosaurs following the main players like the T. Rex. I would have preferred a list of definitions. I also liked the telling of a specific event based on the bones like when the T. Rex was hiding in the trees waiting to grab a bite and the triceratops nearby realises his presence almost like its being told by David Attenborough.

This is probably 4.5 stars. Minus the 0.5 star because the biographical bits did get a little long winded.

Do you like dinosaurs? Do you want to learn how they evolved, how the T.Rex came to dominate the late Cretaceous, and how they were unable to survive the comet/asteroid that hit the Earth? This is the pop science book to do it.

Brusatte has tons of experience and knowledge. He has conducted a lot of research and he talks about other experts in the field in positive ways. The only downside is that sometimes he gets long winded when talking about the merits of the experts, or when he talks about the cool things he has done. They're certainly cool, and as a nerdy fan of dinosaurs, I'm a little jealous of what he got to do as a kid. It might have been different if I had read it, though, instead of listening.

Definitely worth a look if you want pop science about dinosaurs, how they evolved into birds, and feathers. The history of T.Rex is awesome too. And all of the science, really. It's a very informative but accessible book on dinosaur history.

Janne Janssens

Faheem Kajee

The description of the asteroid that resulted in the end of the dinosaurs (final chapter) was spectacular

"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. He 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.."--Inside dust jacket.

Rise & Fall Of The Dinosaurs

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