The rise and fall of the dinosaurs : a new history of a lost world
(Large Print)

Originally published in 2018 by arrangement with William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 477-532).

Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth's most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet's great mysteries. Paleontologist Steve Brusatte draws 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. 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 -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. Brusatte also offers accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made on globe-trotting expeditions, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China.