“There were probably billions of them, living all across the world on every continent,” says Brusatte. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose/The Observer Steve Brusatte out hunting fossils near Carlop south of Edinburgh. It was after things calmed down and some kind of ecological balance was restored that the dinosaurs made their entrance. ![]() The results – an extreme greenhouse effect, acidification of the sea and various other apocalyptic developments – led to the disappearance of more than 90% of the Earth’s species. The first took place about 252m years ago at the end of the Permian period, when activity deep within the Earth’s mantle led to great outpourings of molten rock, massive lava flows that went on for hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of years. ![]() But you know the small ones that had feathers and wings and could fly survived as birds.”īirds excepted, dinosaurs existed between two great catastrophic events on Earth. “The first thing I would say,” says Brusatte, in a pub on a cold and wet day in the village of Carlops in the Scottish Borders, “is that we’re all guilty – I am too – of talking about dinosaurs going extinct. Dead ends in the history of life … But these stereotypes are absurdly wrong.” As he writes: “I was taught that dinosaurs were big, scaly, stupid brutes so ill equipped for their environment that they just lumbered around, biding their time, waiting to go extinct. It also aims to correct some common misconceptions. The book, a gripping read in the best traditions of popular science, sets out to bring the reader up to date with the latest thinking and theories on dinosaurs. So many colleagues of my generation will tell you point-blank that Jurassic Park made them want to be a scientist ![]() Ask him a question about these beasts that colonised the world for over 150m years and the words come pouring out of him like a burst dam. It doesn’t really capture the depth of his passion. To say that Brusatte, a fresh-faced 34-year-old American from Illinois, is enthusiastic about dinosaurs would be like saying Prof Brian Cox takes an interest in the night sky.
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