Publisher: William Morrow
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780062490421
It has taken me a little while to get around to reading this book due to a bit of a backlog I’ve had to work through, that and working for a living tends to chew up a few hours in the day - mind you the latter isn’t much of an excuse as I work in Palaeontology all day long. But in any case the wait was well worth it as this book was a fascinating read.
Dr. Brusatte takes the reader on a journey from the Permian Period some 252 million years ago right up to the time of the Late Cretaceous and the extinction of the dinosaurs due to a rather pesky comet/meteor that hit the earth in the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago. Even though this extinction event was hotly debated by many for a number of years it is now accepted that this is what brought the Cretaceous and the reign of the dinosaurs to an end - with exception of the birds that is, yes birds are descended from dinosaurs. For a good read on this check out “T-Rex and the Crater of Doom” by Walter Alvarez which I reviewed back on November 23, 2020.
The book starts by introducing the reader the world of Permian Period and explains the dawn of the dinosaurs, how they became more dominant, the effects of continent drift on their distribution. It then moves on through the next couple of chapters to discuss the tyrant dinosaurs, and of course many peoples' favourite bad boy T. rex.
There is an excellent discussion on how dinosaurs likely took flight, and in each section there is a good discussion of the dominant species, and how they lived. The final chapter deals with the end of the dinosaurs, and how they died out.
This book was extremely informative, and would make a wonderful introduction to anybody who is interested in dinosaurs, it is an easy read that would be suitable for readers from the higher elementary school grades (after all everybody knows an elementary student who knows all the dinosaurs, right?) right though to seniors. I believe it would also make a great introductory text for first year university as this is the type of book that most students would actually read, as opposed to some of the textbooks typically assigned.
Highly recommended.
