The rise and fall of the dinosaurs : the untold story of a lost world / Stephen Brusatte

Sixty-six million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth. Today, Dr. Steve Brusatte, one of the leading scientists of a new generation of dinosaur hunters, armed with cutting edge technology, is piecing together the complete story of how the dinosaurs ruled the earth for 150 million years. The rise and fall of the dinosaurs is a hugely ambitious and engrossing story of how dinosaurs rose to dominate the planet, written by one of the world's leading palaeontologists. Using fossil clues that have been with state-of-the-art technology, Brusatte traces these magnificent creatures from the Triassic period at the start of their evolution, through the Jurassic period, to their final catastrophic days in the Cretaceous and the legacy that they left behind. Along the way, Brusatte introduces a cast of new dinosaur hunters and gives an insight into what being a palaeontologist is really like. He offers thrilling accounts of some of the most remarkable discoveries he has made, including primitive, human-sized tyrannosaurs, monstrous carnivores even larger than a T. rex and feathered raptor dinosaurs from China buried in volcanic ash. At a time when Homo sapiens has existed for less than 200,000 years and we are already talking about planetary extinction, 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.