Our understanding of dinosaurs has advanced by an astonishing amount since I was playing with my much-beloved set of little plastic ones a few decades ago. Indeed, in just the past few years the scholarly – to say nothing of the popular – debate about their external appearance has radically changed how they are now commonly understood and depicted. Part of this is due to more advanced research techniques, but part of it is also due to a wealth of recently discovered fossils.
In his new The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs; A New History of Lost World, Dr. Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh explains just how radically different our present understanding of these iconic creatures is from only a few decades ago by taking his readers along on a narrative journey from what is now thought about their evolution “from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers” through their rise to become the planet’s dominant megafauna to their eventual “demise” (have to be careful with that term due to the theropods…) at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
I’m certainly looking forward to learning more about what Dr. Brusatte has written in this new book.
