The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs
The 230-Million-Year Story of Their Time on Earth
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A highlight-reel history of the dinosaurs, told like never before—bringing their world to vivid life in a paleontological detective story
The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs tells the 230-million-year epic of these staggeringly fascinating prehistoric creatures, covering their small beginnings, spectacular golden periods, and stunning evolutionary success—before an unthinkable asteroid event brought everything to a screeching halt. But this history digs deeper, using numerous recent fossil discoveries and fresh understandings of genetics and evolution to show how we’ve gleaned so much about a long-lost world from mere fragments of fossil. Marshaling the evidence, award-winning author Riley Black reveals the startling relationships that dinosaurs shared with one another, the land they lived on, and other animal species. By conjuring a more complete picture of Earth in the age of the dinosaurs, she shows us how these massive monsters owe their rise to luck as much as to their cunning—and the many surprising ways they left an indelible mark on their dramatically changing world.
The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Science writer Black (When the Earth Was Green) doles out fresh trivia on dinosaurs in this entrancing primer. She explains that such species as the Supersaurus were able to grow to over 100 feet long because air sacs in their bones enabled them to reduce their weight-to-size ratio. Surveying the creative methods paleontologists use to piece together extinct animals' lives, Black describes how researchers determined that one T. rex was still growing at 18 years old and about to lay eggs by examining growth rings and the buildup of calcium-rich tissue in its bones; this indicated that T. rex could reproduce long before it reached full size. Black also studies evidence for social behavior in dinosaurs, contending that contrary to Jurassic Park's depiction of velociraptor packs coordinating hunts, fossil evidence indicates prehistoric predators likely approached "food sources under uneasy truces that could easily lead to cannibalism as each dinosaur vied for a portion." Elsewhere, she explores what dinosaurs ate, what they used their horns for, and how the discovery that some had feathers transformed scientific understanding of their behavior. The author has a knack for singling out the most surprising and engrossing findings of modern paleontology, bringing the ancient reptiles back to vivid life. The result is an excellent overview of the ever-evolving science on dinosaurs. Photos.
