The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: The Untold Story of a Lost World

‘The need for a readable and up-to-date survey of the current state of palaeontological knowledge is pressing. Thankfully, with The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Steve Brusatte has triumphantly risen to the challenge . . . Nothing . . . is more thrillingly brought to life than the dinosaurs themselves.’ Tom Holland, Sunday Times ‘A Jurassic blockbuster . . . A gripping read in the best traditions of popular science.’ Observer ‘The epic tale of the dinosaurs’ rise to dominance and extinction . . . a thrilling journey back in time.’ National Geographic Sixty-six million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth. Today, a new generation of dinosaur hunters are piecing together the complete history of how the dinosaurs created a hugely successful empire that lasted for around 150 million years. Steve Brusatte, one of the world’s leading palaeontologists, uses fossil clues that have been gathered using state-of-the-art technology to follow these magnificent creatures from the start of their evolution, to their final days, and the legacy that they left behind. Along the way, Brusatte offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable discoveries he has made, including primitive, human-sized tyrannosaurs and monstrous carnivores even larger than a T. rex. 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. ‘Brusatte brings dinosaurs alive for a new generation.’ The Times Dr Steve Brusatte is a paleontologist on the faculty of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He grew up in the Midwestern United States and has a BS in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago, MSc in Palaeobiology from the University of Bristol (UK), and PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Columbia University in New York. At age thirty-one, Steve is widely recognized as one of the leading paleontologists of his generation. He has written over one hundred peer-reviewed scientific papers during his decade of research in the field, named and described over ten new species of dinosaurs, and led groundbreaking studies on how dinosaurs rose to dominance and went extinct. One of his particular research interests is the evolutionary transition between dinosaurs and birds and he is a noted specialist on the anatomy, genealogy, and evolution of the carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.