Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, Steve Brusatte
Nonfiction: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Steve Brusatte
Most little kids love dinosaurs. I know I did. I read about them. I had dinosaur toys. I had posters in my bedroom, one showing a timeline of the Mesozoic: Triassic to Jurassic to Cretaceous and the dinosaurs that lived during each era. (I might have been a nerd.) Now, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte has rekindled that childhood amazement with these creatures of long ago. Brusatte’s book reads almost like a novel, with exciting characters (both human and saurian) and plot twists galore. Although the ending is predictable–spoiler: the dinosaurs do still die in the fallout from an asteroid collision–the journey is fun and fascinating. Well written, exciting, and interesting, this is a book for any dinosaur fan from precocious tween to those of us who risk being called “dinosaurs” ourselves.
Brusatte has collected fossils, stories, and friends from all over the world. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs starts in China, where he was invited by a friend to examine a newly discovered fossil of a dinosaur with a feature long suspected but difficult to find. He writes about trying to find his way through Beijing, finding the right train despite not reading Chinese, traveling with his Chinese friend/colleague through the country to Jinzhou, and arriving at the site where the fossil awaited their inspection. And before we have met a single dinosaur, before we have been introduced to any exotic terminology, we realize we are on an adventure with someone who loves what he does! I’m just going to say it: this guy digs fossils.
(Rim shot.)
Dad jokes aside, Brusatte and his fellow paleontologists are a huge part of this story. From the Bone Wars of the 1800s, where not-so-high-minded ivy-league professors hired people to dig up fossils in the western US (and mess with the digs and fossils of their rivals), to current scholars who get cool nicknames like “the rat pack” and who have sometimes colorful back stories. I am not sure how learning to “deseminate” and inseminate pigs prepared someone for a career in paleontology, but it probably makes for some rather earthy stories around campfires! Brusatte writes with affection and respect for these people whose love for dinosaurs sends them digging in far off and difficult areas, sometimes at personal risk. Crossing a river on a broken foot to get to an exposed fossil sounds incredibly painful, but it’s just one of the many things these women and men do to advance the science of these ancient creatures.
And the science is advancing. The fossil in the opening chapter, the one Brusatte traveled to Jinzhou, China, to see? It was a dinosaur preserved with clear impressions in the stone of feathers! Several more fossils have been discovered showing feathered dinosaurs, showing that dinosaurs are still among us. They no longer dwarf school buses, they no longer have teeth the size of a man’s arm (or actually have teeth at all), but birds are the living legacy of T-Rex and triceratops and all the other residents of the real Jurassic world. Science also shows that many of the attributes we see in modern birds began with their ancient forebears. Rapid growth, the kind many birds still experience, explains how a brontosaurus could go from an egg to a 40-ton behemoth in the span of a single lifetime. Light but strong bones explain how those giants could move, and air pockets within the bones explain how heat could be dispelled by creatures of that size. These are traits common in birds today and seen within the bones of fossilized dinosaurs.
Other research is exploring what colors dinosaurs were, based on microscopic analysis of their fossils! Apparently, individual cells can not only be fossilized, but pigment cells come in different shapes, and those shapes can reveal secrets about color. Computer analysis today is showing how dinosaurs moved, how fast they ran, even modeling behaviors such as likelihood of pack hunting. If T-Rex was not terrifying before, consider that the newest research indicates that it hunted in packs! And, yes, it had depth perception, so the Jurassic Park movie trick of standing very still might have made you a less interesting snack, but would not have protected you.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a beautifully written, excitingly told book about an endlessly fascinating subject. It does not make me want to live in a world with dinosaurs–they would eat me, quickly and painfully. But it does make me want to visit a museum again and marvel at the clues they left behind of their lives. If you enjoy science writing at its best, if you are or know a fan of dinosaurs, or if you want to encourage someone to see how exciting research (and researchers) can be, this book makes a great addition to your library or a great gift to someone else.