The rise and fall of the dinosaurs

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.

A sweeping narrative scientific history that tells the epic story of the dinosaurs. Brusatte examines their origins, their habitats, their extinction, and their living legacy. He offers accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made in dinosaur research, during what he calls "a new golden age of discovery". -- adapted from jacket, Morrow edition.