The rise and fall of the dinosaurs is an incredible story, of a time when giant beasts and other fantastic creatures made the world their own. They walked on the very ground below us, their fossils now entombed in rock – the clues that tell this story. To me, it's one of the greatest narratives in the history of our planet.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is thoroughly enjoyable pop science: author (and celebrated young paleontologist) Steve Brusatte uses his own learning journey to outline the exciting advances occurring today in his field (he calls this the “golden age” of paleontology, noting that new species of dinosaurs are discovered/described at the astounding rate of about one per week), and not only did I learn new and fascinating information from the deep history of our remarkable planet, but I found Brusatte's enthusiasm to be contagious. Who doesn't love dinosaurs? Totally accessible (but fact-filled) and balanced with personal stories (which I acknowledge might strain the patience of those of a more academic bent), it all worked for me.
Early on, Brusatte – who is a Chancellor's Fellow in Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Edinburgh – refers to his “ebullient, wildly animated lecturing style”, and for the purposes of this review, I'd rather demonstrate this ebullience than attempt to list everything that Brusatte taught me. On the sauropods whose tracks he studied on the Scottish Isle of Skye:
There's really no better way to say it: the sauropods that made their marks in that ancient Scottish lagoon were awesome creatures. Awesome in the literal sense of the word – impressive, daunting, inspiring awe. If I was handed a blank sheet of paper and pen and told to create a mythical beast, my imagination could never match what evolution created in sauropods.Brusatte devotes plenty of breathless space to the Tyrannosaurus rex – including debunking what Jurassic Park got wrong about the apex predators (turns out that their eyesight was perfectly sharp, but they couldn't have outrun a jeep) – and writes, “The seat of Rex's power was its head. It was a killing machine, torture chamber for its prey, and an evil mask all in one.” And after having repeatedly referred to T. Rex arms as “sad” and “pathetic”, Brusatte shares new research that has determined, based on strong shoulder extensors and elbow flexors, the Rex used these “short but strong arms to hold down struggling prey while the jaws did their bone-crunching thing. The arms were accessories to murder.” Murder! The writing gets amped up when T. Rex meets its favourite meal:
Triceratops, like its archnemesis T. rex, is a dinosaur icon. In films and documentaries, it usually plays the gentle, sympathetic plant-eater, the perfect dramatic foil to the Tyrant King. Sherlock versus Moriarty, Batman versus the Joker, Trike versus Rex. But it's not all movie magic; no, these two dinosaurs truly would have been rivals 66 million years ago...The King needed immense amounts of flesh to fuel its metabolism; its three-horned comrade was fourteen tons of slow-moving prime steak. You can figure out what happened next.So, you either enjoy a professor writing like a teenaged dino-fanboy, or you don't. Interspersed with the timeline of dinosaur evolution, Brusatte outlines the history of fossil hunting from the “Bone Wars” (which saw 19th-century rivals Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh sending out teams of mercenaries to hunt for bones for their individual glory; in the pursuit of which they weren't above stealing, lying, and sabotaging each other's sites) to the academics of today. In addition to referring to individuals as the “hot shots” or “rock stars” or the “Rat Pack” of paleontology, Brusatte proves that paleontologists just might be a special breed unto themselves. Barnum Brown, the first celebrity paleontologist at the turn of the twentieth century, prospected for dino bones in high summer “decked out in his fur coat with his pickaxe slung over his shoulder”. Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás – an adventurer, WWI spy, and the first paleobiologist – was a “flamboyant dandy and a tragic genius, whose exploits hunting dinosaurs in Transylvania were brief respites from the insanity of the rest of his life. Dracula, in all seriousness, has nothing on the Dinosaur Baron.” And as for Brusatte's modern day colleagues:
Thomas Carr – my absinthe-drinking, Goth-dressing friend who studies T. rex – was with us on the expedition and was part of this team. Clad in khaki (it was far too hot for his usual all-black getup) and sucking down Gatorade by the gallon (absinthe was more of an indoor pursuit), he attacked the mudstones with his rock hammer (which he nicknamed Warrior) and his pickaxe (Warlord), exposing a number of new Triceratops bones.And working on the other side of the world in China, Brusatte describes another rising star:
Jingmai (O'Connor) calls herself a paleontologista – fitting given her fashionista style of leopard-print Lycra, piercings, and tattoos, all of which are at home in the club but stand out (in a good way) among the plaid-and-beard crowd that dominates academia. A native of Southern California – half Irish, half-Chinese by blood – Jingmai is a Roman Candle of energy – delivering caustic one-liners one moment, speaking in eloquent paragraphs about politics the next, and then it's on to music or art or her own unique brand of Buddhist philosophy. Oh yes, and she’s also the world’s number-one expert on those first birds that broke the bounds of Earth to fly above their dinosaur ancestors.And speaking of the first birds: as uncomfortable as I find this book's cover art – depicting a wispily feathered T. rex confronting wispily feathered prey dinos – that's a mental-shift I'll need to force myself to make: Brusatte makes the incontrovertible case that all true dinosaurs (not crocs or other proto-reptiles) were in a direct line to modern day birds and shared many of the same body features (flow-through lungs, wishbones, and yes, feathers; there's a paleontologist working today who can even determine the colours of their plumage). But, if I can mentally shift the T. rex from the upright Barney-the-dinosaur stance depicted in my youth to the balanced-forward pose accepted today, I suppose I can eventually re-imagine it covered in feathers. After all of the enthusiasm Brusatte displays for the rise and evolutionary success of the dinosaurs, the final chapter on their sudden demise is urgently and tragically related:
It was the worst day in the history of our planet. A few hours of unimaginable violence that undid more than 150 million years of evolution and set life on a new course. T. rex was there to see it.An impact from a meteorite (or possibly comet), hitting with the force of “a billion nuclear bombs' worth of energy”, caused the near total extinction of the earth's most successful and widespread species (excepting, of course, for those dinosaurs who survived to evolve into what we think of as birds). The good news is that this catastrophic event paved the wave for the rise of the mammals, and us; the bad news is that we're no more special than the dinosaurs, and catastrophes – including those of our own making – can strike at any time. If you like your pop science poppy, this is an entertaining and informative read.
