This, friends, is a dinosaur.
I believe Pesto’s ancestors would be confused by him, but that’s the beauty of nature. It’s super weird and always doing unexpected things. This book manages to impart a lot of information about the evolution, time on earth, and extinction of (most) dinosaurs while at the same time being very readable and fun to consume. At one point the author uses the phrase “crow-sized weirdos with wings on their arms and legs” to describe a species of dinosaur that differed from most of its counterparts.
The book also details the state of paleontology during the most important discoveries and theories about dinosaurs. This is interesting, and not dull at all! It helps that the author, a prominent paleontologist, was there and involved in many of those discoveries. Like many paleontologists his age, he got into the work after seeing Jurassic Park as a child. It is truly amazing what that movie did for our understanding of dinosaurs by inspiring a generation of nerds. We might not have ever known (or not known for a while) that dinosaurs had feathers, or that they still walked* the earth.
*flew
This was not a meaty book, but that was honestly just what I needed right now. I listened to it on audio, and that was the right decision. I fully plan on checking out the sequel, where Brusatte writes about the rise and reign of mammals.
P.S. the most interesting fact I learned in this book is that dinosaurs were able to get so big, especially the largest ones like the Titanosaurs (and their smaller (lol) cousins the brontosaurus, et al) in large part because their bones had built in air sacs as support, something that no other line of animals has ever developed.
Science is neat. I’m going to look out my window and see if I can spot a dinosaur now.