Stephen L. Brusatte

Excellent history for a general reader by a practicing dinosaur paleontologist. There's a lot of information but presented in a narrative non-fiction technique making it easy to follow, and Brusatte is an entertaining and likeable guide.

From ch.8 about birds, birds are dinosaurs, not an evolutionary lineage or dino-light version, actual dinosaurs. Lightweight hollow bones, super-efficient lungs, high intelligence, high metabolism, fast movement - everything we associate with a bird is the show more same as a dinosaur, because they are dinosaurs. Feathers and wings developed in dinosaurs as with peacocks for display and protection - the smaller animals found they could get lift from early wings in an evolutionary accident - flight was not intentional but when it occurred happen-chance, it quickly took off in many directions.

Dinosaurs lasted nearly 200 million years, a stretch of time so vast as to challenge the imagination. Brusatte does a good job giving the highlights - mass extinctions, evolutionary success stories. The shifting geography of the continents as they drifted apart played into why and how dinosaurs evolved due to climatic changes brought on by long-term volcanic and weather patterns. Time can drive great change. Dinosaurs were not an evolutionary dead-end they are still living. Their demise from the top spot was a random event, but they could return to dominance again should "intelligent" mammals leave the world to the birds. show less

This turned out to be a rather more introductory and popular work than I was expecting, but taken for what it is, it's quite good. It deals with mammals' Palaeozoic forebears, the early mammals living alongside the dinosaurs, and the Cenozoic "reign" of mammals, where they all but monopolize large land animal niches.

Speaking of size-based niches, a point Brusatte makes is that while the dinosaurs kept Mesozoic mammals small, mammals equally kept dinosaurs large - dinosaurs could only invade show more the small endotherm realm by becoming birds, literally keeping out of reach of the mammals.

I'd preferred if Brusatte had kept his politics out of the book, but that's a minor complaint.

The "further reading" section is dangerous. show less

I listened to this as an audiobook and really enjoyed it. I found it started a bit slow - I don't much care about ancient lizards and other pre-mammals - but then became enthralling. A really quite detailed discussion of teeth should have been tedious, but instead it was fascinating. This was the moment when I could see the "mammalness" of mammals first emerging. From then on, the book offered a well thought-through characterisation of mammals and what has made them successful as a group. show more Note that by well thought-through I mean that Brusatte has done a good job of identifying which elements will be pertinent and interesting to a lay reader; I'm not congratulating him on the quality of his science, which I am not an expert in.

The writing is fun and light, but also very clear. It's a shame I don't care about dinosaurs, because I'm sure his other book is also well-written.

Also, I've never been able to do this before:
Carboniferous-Permian-Triassic-Jurassic-Cretaceous-Paleogene (Paleocene-Eocene-Oligocene)-Neogene(Miocene-Pliocene)-Quaternary(Pleistocene-Holocene) show less

The first time I read this book, I borrowed it from Kindle Unlimited and read it as I fell asleep. I was at the height of my self-education on chickens and, considering my hens are modern dinosaurs, it felt right to learn about their ancestors.

This time I just felt like visiting with dinosaurs again and the audio was available on Libby. I never would have read this had it not been on KU back then. A book about DINOSAURS? ME?!

Brusatte makes the science easy to follow and interesting. I like show more his asides about how he knows the other researchers (and making sure they're getting the credit they deserve, too!), his stories about being an annoying teen bothering scientists who would become his advisors, and even the fact that he's a little braggadocious—the man is allowed to expound on his own personal glories in a book he is writing about the field he works in. This jives with other science-themed books I love—Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree wouldn't be nearly as interesting without her memoir intertwined with the science (she received significant pushback on her theories which makes that personal story all the more necessary). Basically, I like to get to know a scientist as I'm learning about the field they've dedicated their life to: see Lab Girl and A Billion Butterflies. While those are marketed as "memoirs", they're also very informative about the science Jahren and Shukla studied.

Finally, the narration by Patrick Lawlor is great and kind of enthusiastic, which is how I imagine Brusatte delivers a lecture. (Granted, I listened at 1.25x, so it probably makes him sound even more excited.) show less