The Last Days of the Dinosaurs
Ratings7
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings7
Average rating3.7
In The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, Riley Black walks readers through what happened in the days, the years, the centuries, and the million years after the impact, tracking the sweeping disruptions that overtook this one spot, and imagining what might have been happening elsewhere on the globe. Life’s losses were sharp and deeply-felt, but the hope carried by the beings that survived sets the stage for the world as we know it now. Picture yourself in the Cretaceous period. It’s a sunny afternoon in the Hell Creek of ancient Montana 66 million years ago. A Triceratops horridus ambles along the edge of the forest. In a matter of hours, everything here will be wiped away. Lush verdure will be replaced with fire. Tyrannosaurus rex will be toppled from their throne, along with every other species of non-avian dinosaur no matter their size, diet, or disposition. They just don’t know it yet. The cause of this disaster was identified decades ago. An asteroid some seven miles across slammed into the Earth, leaving a geologic wound over 50 miles in diameter. In the terrible mass extinction that followed, more than half of known species vanished seemingly overnight. But this worst single day in the history of life on Earth was as critical for us as it was for the dinosaurs, as it allowed for evolutionary opportunities that were closed for the previous 100 million years.
Reviews with the most likes.
A lovely and worthy addition to a growing number of excellent layperson's paleontology books released in recent years. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs presents a series of fictionalized scenarios that immerse the reader in various points on the K–Pg extinction timeline. For instance, we follow a Tyrannosaurus specimen before the asteroid impact, then see the world through the perspective of an Edmontosaurus as the bolide hits the Yucatán peninsula, and so on and so forth. The style is reminiscent of a nature documentary, although Black certainly has her own style and tone; the text would feel incongruous if read by, say, David Attenborough. I do find it curious that Black is criticized in Goodreads reviews for employing a speculative, nature documentary-style approach, while other (excellent) authors such as Thomas Halliday are lauded for the same. Black does an excellent job in the appendix of explaining which parts of the book are near-certain and which are more speculative. Notably, the speculative elements are all relatively conservative.
Black weaves a narrative depicting the K–Pg event as not only a time of great destruction, but as a time of growth and recovery. Mammals, non-dinosaurian reptiles, cephalopods, plants, and algae do not go neglected in this telling of the story. While some of Black's prose could have undergone just a bit more revision, make no mistake that this is a worthwhile book that any paleontology fan will enjoy.
I love Dinosaurs. And yet I've never really branched out from what I learned at school and Discovery channel about their lives and fates. This was a great read to learn more about them.
Easy read but not a lot of facts. Just speculation and this is how this animal felt. No scientific notes and lots of repetitiveness.
