In the book, Brusatte, a palaeontologist specialising in the anatomy and evolution of dinosaurs, recounts the story of the dinosaurs – from their emergence in the Triassic up to their extinction at the hands of a monstrous asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous. A friend was kind enough to buy it for me for my birthday and I’ve just finished feverishly consuming it. The one thing I’d never seen but really wanted to was an updated, narrative non-fiction work for adults about dinosaurs.įear not, I finally found one! Earlier this year, Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs received a flurry of acclaim, as well as significant press attention – perhaps because it filled the gap in the market than many, including myself, had noticed. My obsession with dinosaurs didn’t last forever, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the Jurassic Park films and the book, which still rank among my favourites, for the Walking With Dinosaurs soundtrack which I’ll revisit from time to time, and for any news stories making the rounds on palaeontology. That doesn’t really make me unique – there are thousands, if not millions of children around the world who have obsessively memorised similar details, because dinosaurs capture the imagination these great, ancient beasts who left tantalising clues as to their lives have beguiled countless people over the last two centuries.
I didn’t just parrot “brontosaurus” at people who asked what my favourite dinosaur was, I had a comprehensive internal database of dinosaurs, the locations of their discovery, their estimated sizes and weight, the relative commonness of their remains, the suborders they belonged to, the eras they lived in, and boatloads more.
When I was a child, I was the kid who liked dinosaurs.
0 kommentar(er)
