| Title | : | The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1250271045 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781250271044 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 287 |
| Publication | : | First published April 26, 2022 |
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.
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World Reviews
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April 26: Publication day!
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“Beginnings need endings, a lesson that we can either hold carefully or that we can deny until it finds us.”
Sixty-something million years ago the world irrevocably changed. One day enormous colossal herbivores and carnivores a.k.a. T. rex and Co. rule the world, shaping itself their needs and creating an ecosystem in which the world of the Cretaceous era thrives. The next day that world is mostly gone, the fascinating prehistoric monsters dead and the world eventually becoming the place for mammals, with only tiny feathered dinosaurs — yes, think about that next time a pigeon poops on you, and a hummingbird is an ex-dino just like a chihuahua is an ex-wolf — living on, while their mighty cousins whose skeletons are breathtaking and majestic and command our imagination remained trapped forever behind the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary.“In a matter of hours, everything before us will be wiped away. Lush verdure will be replaced with fire. Sunny skies will grow dark with soot. Carpets of vegetation will be reduced to ash. Contorted carcasses, dappled with cracked skin, will soon dot the razed landscape.”
The story of how we got there is often in the minds of many summarized as such: “Often, this is about as far as the discussion goes: an immense rock smacked into the planet and myriad species were summarily snuffed out. Simple as that.” Riley Black decided to give us the details - the infrared pulse, the infernal fires, the impact winter, the acid rain, and how it may have affected different dinosaur species and why.“This time, the great rock is going to hit. It’s not going to get bumped off course by another asteroid. It’s not going to burrow into Mars and crack the Red Planet’s dry surface. It’s not going to slam into the orbiting moon, as many other rocks have, making lunar seas and craters. Out of millions of potentially deadly rocks, this is the one. This is the accident that will exact an awful toll on Earth’s species, but without malice or vengeance. It’s both end and beginning, a period that will punctuate the Earth and create a stark dividing line between the seemingly endless Age of Reptiles and the fiery dawn of the Age of Mammals.”
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“The battle for life on the first day of the Paleocene is won and lost by little more than biological threads. Only those organisms that are able to find shelter—below the ground, beneath the water—have any chance. All others, from the largest Edmontosaurus to the smallest insect, perish. There is no behavior that can save them. Evolution prepared them for the world of tomorrow, and perhaps the day after, but not for this.”
Black focuses not just on the catastrophe but on the interplay between the species since the ecosystems are all about the links between the organisms. She does it in an almost nature documentary style, bringing the point of view of one creature, then another and so on (and explaining her reasons for making certain choices in the chapter notes in the end, that are almost a long as the book itself). Dinosaurs in the before and during the asteroid strike, the survivors - birds, turtles, crocodiles - shortly after, and early mammals in the hundreds of thousands to a millennium after. The end of one era and the beginning of another.“The mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous isn’t just the conclusion of the dinosaurs’ story, but a critical turning point in our own. We wouldn’t exist without the obliterating smack of cosmic rock that plowed itself into the ancient Yucatán. Both stories are present in that moment. The rise and the fall are inextricable.”
Life is tenacious, and extinction for some allows another to take the niche freed because, as we see, sometimes pure luck and happenstance equip some to deal with the end of the world as they know it just a bit better than the less lucky ones. We ultimately are the benefactors of that one stray asteroid. T. rex and buddies were less lucky, those majestic doomed monsters.
So it goes.“This is not a monument to loss. This is an ode to resilience that can only be seen in the wake of catastrophe.”
I liked it. I liked the clear palpable love and enthusiasm Riley Black has for that period of history that ended so abruptly and brutally. I liked how well she captures those imaginary points of view of different creatures. I even liked the very long chapter notes where she explains things that were too much to put in the main narrative. It’s very accessible and interesting and clearly a work of love.
4 stars.“No species is an island. No species is a discrete and complete package by itself. A species is an expression of the interaction between organisms in its environment. […] Any organism is a node that is bound to and reliant on the others around it, whether there is any direct interaction between them or not. The actions of even one organism affect others, which affect others still, entire unseen webs of possibility that pulsate through each vital moment—the thread of life itself.”
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Also posted on
my blog. -
The disaster goes by different names. Sometimes it’s called the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. For years, it was called the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T, mass extinction that marked the end of the Age of Reptiles and the beginning of the third, Tertiary age of life on Earth. That title was later revised according to the rules of geological arcana to the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, shorted to K-Pg. But no matter what we call it, the scars in the stone tell the same story. Suddenly, inescapably, life was thrown into a horrible conflagration that reshaped the course of evolution. A chunk of space debris that likely measured more than seven miles across slammed into the planet and kicked off the worst-case scenario for the dinosaurs and all other life on Earth. This was the closest the world has ever come to having its Restart button pressed, a threat so intense that—if not for some fortunate happenstances—it might have returned Earth to a home for single-celled blobs and not much else.
--------------------------------------The loss of the dinosaurs was just the tip of the ecological iceberg. Virtually no environment was left untouched by the extinction, an event so severe that the oceans themselves almost reverted to a soup of single-celled organisms.
This is a story about two things, Earth’s Big Bang and evolution. K-Pg (pronounced Kay Pee Gee - maybe think of it as KFC with much bigger bones, where everything is overcooked?) marks the boundary between before and after Earth’s own Big Bang, manifested today by a specific layer of stone in the geologic record.
Riley with Jet - image from The Museum of the Earth
Ok, yes, I know that the catastrophic crash landing of the bolide, a seven-miles-across piece of galactic detritus, most likely an asteroid, that struck 66.043 million years ago, give or take, was not the biggest bad-parking-job in Earth’s history. An even bigger one hit billions of years ago. It was nearly the size of Mars, and that collision may have been what created our moon. Black makes note of this in the book. But in terms of impact, no single crash-and-boom has had a larger effect on life on planet Earth. Sure, about 3 billion years ago an object between 23 and 36 miles across dropped in on what is now South Africa. There have been others, rocks larger than K-Pg, generating even vaster craters. But what sets the Chicxulub (the Yucatan town near where the vast crater was made, pronounced Chick-sue-lube) event on the apex is its speed and approach, 45 thousand mph, entering at a 45-degree angle. (You wanna see the fastest asteroid ever to hit Earth? Ok. You wanna see it again?) It also helps that the material into which it immersed itself was particularly likely to respond by vaporizing over the entire planet. An excellent choice for maximum destruction of our mother. And of course, its impact on life, animal life having come into being about 800 million years ago, was unparalleled. In the short term, it succeeded in wiping out the large non-avian dinosaurs, your T-Rex sorts, Triceratops grazers, brontosaurian browsers, and a pretty large swath of the planetary flora as well, burning up much of the globe and inviting in a nuclear winter that added a whole other layer of devastation. Aqueous life was not spared. You seen any mososaurs lately? Even tiny organisms were expunged en masse. (Cleanup in aisle everywhere!)
Image from Facts Just for Kids
Here’s what the Earth looked like just before, just after, and then at increments, a week, a month, a year, and on to a million years post event. It is a common approach in pop science books to personalize the information being presented. Often this takes the form of following a particular scientist for a chapter as she or he talks about or presents the matter under consideration. In The Last Days… Black lets one particular species, usually one individual of that species per chapter, lead the way through the story, telling how it came to be present, how it was impacted by the…um…impact, and what its descendants, if there would be any, might look like. She wants to show why the things that were obliterated came to their sad ends, but also how the things that survived managed to do so.
Quetzcoatlus - image from Earth Archives
But as fun and enlightening as it is to track the geological and ecological carnage, like an insurance investigator, (T-Rex, sure, covered. But those ammonites? Sorry, Ms. Gaea, that one’s not specified in the contract. I am so sorry.) is only one part of what Riley Black is on about here. She wants to dispel some false ideas about how species take on what we see as environmental slots.
Mesodma - image from Inverse
Some folks believe that there are set roles in nature, and that the extinction of one actor (probably died as a result of saying that verboten word while performing in The Scottish Play) leads inevitably to the role being filled by another creature (understudy?) As if the demise of T-Rex, for example, meant that some other seven-ton, toothy hunter would just step in. But there is no set cast of roles in nature, each just waiting for Mr, Ms, or Thing Right to step into the job. (Rehearsals are Monday through Saturday 10a to 6p. Don’t be late), pointing out that what survived was largely a matter of luck, of what each species had evolved into by the time of the big event. If the earth is on fire, for example, a small creature has a chance to find underground shelter, whereas a brontosaurus might be able to stick it’s head into the ground, but not much else, and buh-bye bronto when the mega-killer infrared pulse generated by you-know-what sped across the planet turning the Earth into the equivalent of a gigantic deep fryer and making all the exposed creatures and flora decidedly extra-crispy.
Thescelosaurus - image from Wiki
Black keeps us focused on one particular location,
Hell Creek, in Montana, with bits at the ends of every chapter commenting on things going on in other, far-away parts of the world, showing that this change was global. When the impact devastates the entire planet, it makes much less sense to think of the specific landing spot as ground zero. It makes more sense to see it as a planet-wide event, which would make the entire Earth, Planet Zero. It was not the first major planetary extinction, or even the second. But it was the most immediate, with vast numbers of species being exterminated within twenty-four hours.
Thoracosaurus - image from artstation.com
I do not have any gripes other than wishing that I had had an illustrated copy to review. I do not know what images are in the book. I had to burrow deep underground to find the pix used here. I expect it is beyond the purview of this book, but I could see a companion volume co-written by, maybe,
Ed Yong, on how the microbiomes of a select group of creatures evolved over the eons. For, even as the visible bodies of critters across the planet changed over time, so did their micro-biome. What was The Inside Story (please feel free to use that title) on how the vast array of bugs that make us all up changed over the millions of years, as species adapted to a changing macrobiome.
Purgatorius - image from science News
I love that Riley adds bits from her own life into the discussion, telling about her childhood obsession with dinosaurs, and even telling about the extinctions of a sort in her own life. What glitters throughout the book, like bits of iridium newly uncovered at a dig, is Black’s enthusiasm. She still carries with her the glee and excitement of discovery she had as a kid when she learned about Dinosaurs for the first time. That effervescence makes this book a joy to read, as you learn more and more and more. Black is an ideal pop-science writer, both uber-qualified and experienced in her field, and possessed of a true gift for story-telling.
Also, the appendix is well worth reading for all the extra intel you will gain. Black explains, chapter by chapter, where the hard science ends and where the speculation picks up. Black incorporates into her work a wonderful sense of humor. This is always a huge plus!
Eoconodon - image from The New York Times
Pull up a rock in the Hell Creek amphitheater. Binoculars might come in handy. An escape vehicle (maybe a
TVA time door?) of some sort would be quite useful. Get comfortable and take in the greatest show on Earth (sorry
Ringling Brothers) There literally has never been anything quite like it, before or since. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs a joy to read, is one of the best books of the year.From the time life first originated on our planet over 3.6 billion years ago, it has never been extinguished. Think about that for a moment. Think through all those eons. The changing climates, from hothouse to snowball and back again. Continents swirled and bumped and ground into each other. The great die-offs from too much oxygen, too little oxygen, volcanoes billowing out unimaginable quantities of gas and ash, seas spilling over continents and then drying up, forests growing and dying according to ecological cycles that take millennia, meteorite and asteroid strikes, mountains rising only to be ground down and pushed up anew, oceans replacing floodplains replacing deserts replacing oceans, on and on, every day, for billions of years. And still life endures.
Review posted – May 13, 2022
Publication date – April 26, 2022
I received an ARE of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs from St. Martin’s Press in return for working my ancient, nearly extinct fingers to the bone to write a review that can survive. Thanks, folks.
This review has been cross-posted on my site,
Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s
personal,
FB,
Instagram,
Tumblr, and
Twitter pages
Profile from Museum of the EarthVertebrate Paleontologist & Science Writer
Interviews
Riley Black is a vertebrate paleontologist and science writer. She is passionate about sharing science with the public and writes about her experiences as a transgender woman in paleontology.
Riley began her science writing career as a Rutgers University undergraduate. She founded her own blog, Laelaps, and later wrote for Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, and more. Riley has authored books for fossil enthusiasts of all ages, including Did You See That Dinosaur?, Skeleton Keys, My Beloved Brontosaurus, and Written in Stone.
Riley loves to spend time in the field, searching the Utah landscape for signs of prehistoric life. Her fossil discoveries are in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum of Utah, and the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Riley’s work in the field fuels her writing. She believes doing fieldwork is the best way to learn about paleontology.
In your own words, what is your work about?
“What really holds my work together is the idea that science is a process. Science is not just a body of facts or natural laws. What we find today will be tested against what we uncover tomorrow, and sometimes being wrong is a wonderful thing. I love the fact that the slow and scaly dinosaurs I grew up with are now brightly-colored, feathered creatures that seem a world apart from what we used to think. I believe fossils and dinosaurs provide powerful ways to discuss these ideas, how there is a natural reality we wish to understand with our primate brains. The questions, and why we’re asking them, are more fascinating to me than static answers.”
-----IFL Science -
IFLScience Interview With Riley Black: The Last Days of the Dinosaurs - video - 15:40 – with Dr. Alfredo Carpineti - There is a particularly lovely bit at the back end of the interview in which Black talks about the inclusion in the book of a very personal element
-----Fossil Friday Chats -
"Sifting the Fossil Record" w/ Riley Black” - nothing to do with this book, but totally fascinating
Items of Interest from the author
-----WIRED -
articles by the author as Brian Switek
-----Scientific American -
articles by the author as Brian Switek
-----Riley’s site – a list of
Selected Articles
-----Science Friday -
articles by the author
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Excerpt
Items of Interest
-----Earth Archives -
Quetzlcoatlus by Vasika Udurawane and Julio Lacerda
-----NASA -
Sentry Program
-----Science Friday -
Mortunaria - a filter-feeding plesiosaur
-----Biointeractive -
The Day the Mesozoic Died: The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs - on the science that produced our understanding of how the dinosaurs died out – video – 33:50
-----Wiki on the
Hell Creek Formation
-----Destiny -
The First Minutes The Dinosaurs Went Extinct - about 13 minutes - video on the short term impact of the impact - pretty intense
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"As much as we love dinosaurs—enshrining them like scientific relics in our museums, bringing them back to life in film—we know we exist only because they ceded the evolutionary stage to our ancestors."
Last week, a NASA spacecraft hit a small asteroid 7 million miles (11 million km) from Earth The spacecraft travelled ten months to reach Dimorphos, colliding with it in a test to see if it would be able to impact its orbit.
It was thrilling to watch as DART neared Dimorphos, its rough surface becoming more and more detailed. Suddenly, the screen went red.
(Image: Blank red screen)
IMPACT!
This was NASA's first attempt at navigating a spacecraft to collide with another object. It is amazing to me. It's not like they targeted and hit a nearby object (though in terms of space, Dimorphos is close). This is seven million miles away! Science rocks! And hits rocks.....
(Yeh, bad dad joke, sorry.)
If only the dinosaurs had gone through with their own DART mission before Chicxulub came along, they might have been able to knock it off course before it could collide with Earth.
But no. While many of the dinosaurs were forward thinking and wanted to prepare for possible apocalyptic scenarios, the conservatives had been in charge of the World Government for many years and did not want to raise taxes in order to prepare for a potential risk.
They wouldn't even spend money on scenarios scientists were certain would happen, as long as the worst wouldn't occur during their own lifetimes. Who cares about the children and their children and the world they would have to live in? They only cared about fetuses, not living, breathing dinosaurs....
So anyway, the dinosaurs could have been prepared. They could have sent their own rockets to deflect that six mile wide asteroid, thus ensuring they would rule earth for another 150 million years.
But they didn't. And so here we are.
In The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World, author Riley Black takes us back to the days of the dinosaurs right before the asteroid hit. She describes the habitat of these massive beasts leading up to the day of impact before describing what happened immediately after, then a month, a year, one hundred, one thousand, one hundred thousand, and one million years after impact.
It was interesting to watch evolution unfold, to see tiny mammals fill more and more of the evolutionary niches left behind by the death of the dinosaurs.
Ms Riley writes in an engaging manner bringing the dinosaurs back to life and out of extinction for the pages of this book. Her fascination and love of these creatures shines through, making me appreciate them more.
I also found it fascinating to see how events developed after the asteroid struck.
Some fun tidbits:
•The force with which Chicxulub struck was "10 billion times greater than the atomic bombs detonated at the end of World War II", releasing 420 zettajoules worth of energy.
•This impact resulted in the extinction of more than 75% of the species then on Earth, including all the terrestrial animals.
•Dinosaurs reigned for "more than twenty-eight times longer than humans in any form have existed".
•In the days of dinosaurs, there were fleas up to an inch long. (I hope they had Frontline or Advantage II.)
•During the Jurassic, some snakes still had tiny limbs protruding from either side of their bodies.
•"Ferns are among the most ancient plants on the planet." The first of them evolved about 360 million years ago and many were the size of trees.
•We are still finding new dinosaur species - about one new species is named every two weeks.
If you also find those interesting, there are many more fun facts in this book. I recommend it to anyone who loves dinosaurs and/or evolutionary biology.
To know that had the non-avian dinosaurs not gone extinct, humans probably never would have evolved is both sad and astounding. It goes to show that there possibly can be very rare occasions (about once every 150 million years), when it benefits humanity to have conservatives in charge.
We owe our existence to that massive asteroid, the most devastating to ever hit Earth. Evolution requires change and the demise of some species leads to the birth of others.
"Life endures. Life changes. Life is a beautiful and horrible thread made of uncountable organisms, a relationship that can do virtually anything except remain the same." -
A highly cinematic portrait of what life was like for the dinosaurs before and after the asteroid impact (as they were immediately or slowly dying off). Notably, the author takes us through incremental periods of time following the world-altering impact and shows how life forged on after the devastation.
Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!
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This was a quite fascinating tale! A description of the end of the dinosaurs with the meteor strike and the first million years of evolution that followed. Quite fascinating. The scientific backing comes in the appendix.
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I love dinosaurs. Always have. Wanted to be a paleontologist as a child.
This book fell very flat for me. While there is fascinating information in the book at times, it is vastly bogged down and dragged out through an attempted story narrative. Specifically, the author creates fictional dinosaurs and describes their last day in detail “She went here. She smelled death. She went there. She ate this” (but with a lot more detail). It became very draining. I kept wanting to speed the book up to get to the actual facts about dinosaurs. Actually, I'd just rather hearing facts about the dinosaurs rather than have to tease them out of the long rambling "stories."
It also became very repetitive. By halfway I didn’t want to read anymore.
Thanks netgalley for my ARC -
Dinosaurs grabbed me, as usual, when I was a kid, but I wouldn’t say that my fascination has endured as it has with some. Nevertheless, at some point last year, I had a moment where I decided to seek out more information on these creatures and their extinction. This is not the first book I added to my to-read list, but it happens to be the first book I’ve read, mostly thanks to getting an eARC from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs wasn’t what I was expecting, yet it was a pleasant surprise.
Have you ever watched one of those “documentaries” on Discovery Channel that are more like recreations? It starts with an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, and then there are computer-generated sequences of dinosaurs running for cover while a narrator in a refined British accent explains how they are all about to die. That’s what’s going on here. Riley Black narrates the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs (and many other species). She chooses a main character for each chapter, a Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, or sometimes even a plucky mammal perhaps distantly related to us. Then she uses that focal point to explore changes to the environment and the evolutionary adaptations and accidents that contributed to some species surviving and others … well, not.
That is the crux, of course: we think of the extinction event as “the end of the dinosaurs,” and it was … but it was also the beginning of the Age of Mammals. Without that asteroid, then in all likelihood there wouldn’t be us. Moreover, Black correctly situations this mass extinction on a continuum of other such extinctions throughout the history of life on Earth—each extinction altering the balance enough to allow different types of life to take hold in ways never before seen. So while it probably sucks from the perspective of a species going extinct, these extinctions are, in the end, part of the natural cycle. Also, the dinosaurs had a pretty good run—orders of magnitude longer than we humans have been around—so I don’t feel that sorry for them.
At first, Black’s decision to narrate events without any reference to how we might know, for example, that dinosaurs used trees as back-scratching posts, annoyed me. I like the story of how. I want to understand how the human ingenuity that is the scientific method led to the knowledge we have of events millions of years in the past. That is what I think is so cool.
Fortunately, Black did something clever. After the conclusion of the book (I was surprised to run into it only 70 percent of the way in), there is a lengthy appendix where she goes, chapter-by-chapter, over the “how” of each event. So if you are a stickler like me, don’t throw the book out after the first couple of chapters: stick with it, and you will be rewarded!
Indeed, one of my first thoughts as I was reading the book and ran across phrases like “lush verdue” was, “Oh, Riley Black can *write.*” I say this because there is a difference between a competent science communicator and a writer, and Black is both of these things. So that, in turn, makes the choice to split the narrative from the scientific explication even more palatable: as I said above, reading the first part of this book is very much like watching a recreation documentary. It’s compelling in a way that perhaps mixing the two wouldn’t have been. So while the choice irked me at first, I not only have come around, but I’m fully in favour of it simply because Black has the writing skills to back it up.
I learned a lot from this book too. Paleontology has come a long way since I was a kid. I had heard the news that even non-avian dinoasurs probably had feathers, or at least a fuzz approaching feathers. I’ve followed some cool announcements about estimates of T-rex populations, etc. But they never really come back to dinosaurs in school after that initial fascination as a kid, so there was a lot I didn’t know. For example, I was under the impression that the death of most non-avian dinosaurs was a gradual, drawn-out process following the impact event itself. Black marshals evidence that disagrees: according to some studies, it’s more likely that the infrared pulse from the impact fried pretty much all organic life on the surface of the planet within minutes. That is to say, the dinosaurs died very quickly, with only a few holdouts under the water or the ground to represent their species for the remainder of their lives. So that was new to me. Similarly, Black’s telescoping orders-of-magnitude approach to chapters—a minute after, a day after, a month after, a year after, a hundred years after, etc.—helped me wrap my head around the time frame of the recovery of life.
Beyond informing us about the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, this book has a lot to teach us about the ways in which ecosystems interact. Black spends a great deal of time focusing on the complex interconnections among creatures, from the relationship between pollinators and flowers or seedcones and birds to the roles played by apex predators like T-rex, brought low more often through the smallest micro-organisms than through a challenge from another dinosaur. I think we humans often have this tendency to think very discretely, and Black’s writing really encourages us to see the dinosaurs in a holistic way, as part of this vast tapestry of life, rather than as an entirely different type of life form.
As a final aside, I had the pleasure when reading the conclusion of learning that Black is, like me, a trans woman (and, like me, transitioned in adulthood). I’m not saying I like the book more for that, but it was really like a cherry on top of this reading experience, seeing more of us out there, thriving, writing about our passions. That’s the future I want.
So, if like me you are having one of those random urges to learn a particular topic, and that topic happens to be dino-related, I recommend this book!
Originally posted on
Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
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Black takes a bit of a controversial approach in this book, presenting different situations in which animals found themselves after the K–Pg event, narrated in the first person. I enjoyed it, but I'm sure a lot of people will take issue with it. I can tell all these narratives were based on extant fossils, and honestly, anybody demanding facts doesn't understand what palaeontology is about. We have very little information and a messed up fossil record, so the best we can do is speculate wildly, and this was as good a way as any to do it.
Black did go into the ways mammals were able to survive and thrive, from finding shelter from the initial searing heat and the ensuing issues that reduced sunlight caused (if you think we have a supply chain problem, imagine if the sun was shining at 80%!), and that was definitely my favourite part of the book.
I had a small problem with the section about avian dinosaurs' brain size correlating to their intelligence, with smaller animals automatically being less intelligent than bigger ones. I don't think you'll find an ornithologist that will tell you that a crow is less smart than an ostrich. That aside, it was an enjoyable read. -
I really wanted to love this. Like many millennials, I grew up fascinated by creatures of the past- but especially dinosaurs. I was expecting a deep dive into new (relative to when I was a child) discoveries and theories about the last days of the dinosaurs, but instead I was given a so-so storytelling from the animals' perspective, which came off as childish to me. This book is better suited for someone with no prior knowledge.
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This is a difficult book to rate.
It has a very different way of telling the story of the disaster that killed off the dinosaurs and its aftermath. At first, I wasn't sure that it was working for me but as I continued, it grew on me. The story-telling method made the world seem real. I could picture the dinosaurs, the jungle, the meadows, the ponds, the humidity, the organized chaos and Life of that world.
Interspersed in the narrative is a multitude of interesting and new (to me) facts. The author pulls in the past as well to show how Nature and Life come together to shape an every-changing world.
The phenomenon of the asteroid and the fallout from it is told in an all-encompassing, interesting and understandable way. One can feel the World change, the darkness appear....and not disappear. I could picture the World, it's fall and it's regrowth.
Each chapter occurs at intervals after the disaster. It's amazing how much the flora and fauna struggled to find their footing again. It's amazing that we're all here, really.
The wonder and awe of Life, its diversity, its tenacious hold, its adaptability. Life will never give up on the Earth. It will always be here, even after we are not. That is the lesson of the Dinosaurs, I think.
On the other side, the author is repetitive and that took away from the story, taking me out of the narrative.
The Latin names for the creatures is interesting and also confusing. It's not often that we think of names such as "Coniophis". It wasn't a deal breaker and I found it informative, but I had to check out the names to see what animal was being discussed and that took me out of the narrative at times.
The sequence could be choppy at times. There's the dinosaur, then we go back in time, then we're back to the dinosaur, for example. I sometimes found that confusing as it wasn't always immediately clear that a transition in Time had occurred.
All in all, I liked this book. It was a real experience for me to read about the World of the Dinosaurs, it's demise and the rebirth of Flora and Fauna over the Millennium. This book showed the progress in ways that made it seem like a real experience, not merely lists of dates and names.
I'd love to go visit The Boundary one day. That would be awe-inspiring and humbling. -
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs offers a beautifully written narrative of mass extinction and its aftermath, and adds thoughtful observations on the role of evolution in ecosystem recovery. Read my full review at
https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2022... -
The story seems familiar, almost banal: great fearsome creatures, all wiped out by an even more fearsome, more destructive hunk of rock. A few tentative mammals survived and began to thrive. The meek inherited the earth.
In her book, The Last Days of Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World, Riley Black sets out to enrich this story and bring it to life. She uses a narrative style, developing characters out of organisms that have been dead for millions of years. Her objective is ambitious: to retell the story of the famed extinction and the life that emerged in the next million years. Amidst this larger story, we are given snapshots of organisms trying to survive as Black attempts to inject as much life as she can into her book. She dedicates a great deal of pages to the ways organisms interacted with their environments during the drastic changes caused by the asteroid impact; these glimpses are representative of wide-ranging and extreme changes to ecosystems.
Black’s enthusiasm and love for dinosaurs is evident. She writes about organisms that are long extinct with a sense of wonder, painstakingly incorporating details of their life history and ecology into narrative-style writing. This works better in some cases than others. The story is at its best when Black writes about the interactions between organisms, using their actions to show, not tell. When she turns her focus away from a single organism and writes about the interactions between changing plant, animal, and arthropod communities, the narrative proceeds at a brisk and interesting pace. At these points, we begin to get a story that feels organic, as Black seamlessly integrates facts about the environmental conditions and the biology of the organisms with her narrative. However, much of the time, this writing feels clunky. Black often relies on methods of info-dumping facts in the midst of an organism’s story. The action comes to a stuttering halt and reading feels like a slog at those moments. Enthusiasm on its own cannot make a compelling story. In fact, Black’s enthusiasm can exacerbate the problem, as she expounds on details that feel like unnecessary tangents. Amidst these smaller clunky stories, the book feels at times like a loose collection of facts rather than the overarching story of life after extinction. The broad scope of the book demands a tight, careful focus in order to create a narrative. The tangents deal a significant blow to the creation of this narrative.
Though this book has its weak points, I believe it is a compelling read for those who already have a strong interest in paleontology and dinosaurs. The language is accessible for people who do not have a background in science, and the book contains a passion and love for life at its core. Black’s lucid, life-affirming perspective informs every facet of her work. Black goes beyond the doom and destruction trope of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that the asteroid caused. Rather, her story is a celebration of life and its resilience. She illustrates the extinction as an end and beginning: “the conclusion of the dinosaurs’ story, [and] a critical turning point in our own.” -
Loved this book! (Own it, too.)
Brilliantly written, in a language ANYONE can understand. (Sometimes 'science topics' are filled with technical language etc.) The kind of book anyone interested in science - the past, animals, evolution, how things change over time - would enjoy. Also, not a heavy or dense book, not too long, but every page filled with insight and detail.
The key giveaway I took when reading was how EVERYTHING changes over time. We little humans, with our short lifespans, get to see such a small part of this. Yes, we might live through earthquakes, a war or two, recession, depression, and our own personal challenges, but the Earth? It goes through HUGE changes over MILLIONS of years. I'll stop with the caps now...
And though the author's main topic is about dinosaurs, Riley Black does not hesitate to talk about geological forces, climate issues, drops in sea level - or rises - and what happens during ice ages, periods of long hot summers and times when the oxygen levels change dramatically. The focus, though, is on what happened when and why on a certain day about 65 million years ago. About who died. (Almost everything alive.) Who survived. (You'd be surprised who made it through.) And what happened after because of it. (We humans are descended from the lucky survivors.)
Fascinating. Eye-opening. Complete. I've read other books by Riley Black and enjoyed them all. I own most of them, too.
Five stars. -
The day dinosaurs died
The last day of the dinosaurs began as any morning during the Spring season 66.043 million years ago in the Northwestern states of the Unted States. Tanis is part of the heavily studied Hell Creek Formation, a group of rocks spanning four states renowned for significant fossil discoveries from the Upper Cretaceous (Cretaceous era;100.5–66 million years ago) and lower Paleocene (Paleocene era; 66-56 million years ago). Tanis is a significant site because it recorded the events 15 minutes after the impact of the giant seven-mile-wide Chicxulub asteroid in palaeobiological detail. This impact which struck the Gulf of Mexico wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs.
Tanis resides in the state of North Dakota about 2,000 miles from the impact site in the Gulf of Mexico. The globe burned with wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and seismic waves ravaged life at Tanis. The life at Tanis was entombed in sediment by seismic waves that was travelling at 11,000 miles per hour. These fossils were recently discovered and first reported in New Yorker Magazine in March 2019. The fossils of sturgeon and paddlefish hold the key which had small particles stuck in their gills. These are the glass spherules of molten rock kicked out from the impact site in the Gulf of Mexico that then fell back across the planet. The Tanis fishes breathed these particles as they were thrown out of the river as the big surge dismantled and disoriented the entire ecosystem with tens of miles on the land from the river. On this Earth-shattering day, sulfur ejected by the asteroid blocked all sunlight. The atmosphere turned acidic due to sulfuric acid and the oceans became unhabitable. The planet was plunged into darkness for decades, and temperatures dropped dramatically.
The Western Interior Seaway was a large inland sea that existed from the early Late Cretaceous to earliest Paleocene, splitting the continent of North America into two landmasses, Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. Tanis in North Dakota was the northern end of the seaway where the catastrophic events occurred.
The author is a well-known journalist covering the paleontological significance of the death and destruction caused on the same day of the asteroid impact. There are numerous blogs and even discussions on TV about fossil evidence on the last day of the dinosaur. This book reads effortlessly despite the lack of illustrations and photographs in this book. Parts of book material has already appeared in Smithsonian Magazine. -
This book is about an extinction level event that destroyed the dinosaurs. I thought the book started out really good and interesting. After about more than half way through it becomes boring. The author talked about being transgender. I’m not sure what that had to do with the dinosaur extinction. It seemed a rather unnecessary inclusion. For the most part I enjoyed the book. I think maybe the author could have included a picture of the dinosaurs she was talking about. It would have added to what was happening.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy -
so this is dinosaur fanfiction.
which I'm not against, but it wasn't what I wanted from this. -
This book isn't academic or even particularly scholarly. The book is written in a narrative style reminiscent of nature documentaries - something like the recent David Attenborough/BBC production Prehistoric Planet (2022). So it reads more like a story that describes, in vignette form, the end of the Cretaceous and the beginning of the Paleocene. There are no diversions for author anecdotes or commentary about the scientific studies that imply the narrative that Black has provided, or to differentiate what is knows/probably and what the author assumes. This sort of thing is lumped together in the appendix, which provides a brief overview of what is found in the fossil record and other studies, and what is an educated speculation on the part of the author. There is also a notes section with references. There are no useful diagrams or illustrations of any of the creatures mentioned in the text, except for vaguely cartoonish chapter header illustrations that weren't particularly useful.
In the narrative, Riley Black takes us back to Hell Creek, ancient Montana, 66 million years ago. There are ten chapters, each of which describes the environment and some of the plants and animals that are found in ancient Hell Creek, with the occasional paragraph or two mentioning other locations. The narrative explores ancient Hell Creek: (1) before the asteroid impact; (2) at impact; (3) the first hour after impact; (4) the first day after impact; (5) the first month; (6) one year after impact; (7) one hundred years after impact; (8) one thousand years after impact; (9) one hundred thousand years after impacts; and (10) one million years after impact. The author starts off with Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops, goes through the abilities required to survive in the post-apocalyptic world, the adaptations made, the development of the new world, the rise of mammals, and ends up with Eoconodon and Purgatorius.
This is an interesting way to describe the various prehistoric habitats, and made for an enjoyable reading experience. But at the end, the whole book was superficial and didn't provide enough information or tell me anything I didn't already know, so was something of a disappointment. I'm actually not sure if this was even meant for adult readers as opposed to teenagers? The writing was fairly straight forward, with almost no technical terms. Fun but shallow. -
Riley Black’s The Last Days of the Dinosaurs explores our world in the first million years after the Chicxulub asteroid impact that spelled the end of the Age of Dinosaurs and raised the curtain on the Age of Mammals, focusing on the Hell Creek ecosystem. It’s a well-written and lively narrative of what happened in the aftermath of what they describe as the single worst day in the history of life on this planet – as Riley writes, within a day, nearly every terrestrial species that couldn’t find refuge near water or underground went extinct.
Riley freely admits to the speculative nature of the chapters but they provide the notes from the latest studies that support these musings.
The only “fault” I can say about this book is that I wish Riley had taken us a few more chapters into the post-Dinosaurian world – maybe taken us out to about 20 million years after the impact. Maybe they’ll write a sequel…
Recommended. I’d particularly recommend it to parents of 6th to 8th graders who might be exhibiting interest in this topic. Riley isn’t writing for specialists or even advanced undergrads & the format and writing are perfect for getting a kid interested. -
Surprised myself and read yet another dinosaur book.
I've always been entirely indifferent to dinosaurs, until the last several years.
Generally, I liked the layout of this book and the way it was written. Notably, it takes a narrative turn with several vignettes on the dinosaurs, mammals, birds, and other creatures that made their way through the asteroid impact (or...you know... not). This makes it more captivating and fun to read in the same way as Sam Kean's books or other more engaging science authors.
The highlight for me was really the impact and the immediate aftermath. You might wonder how in the heck anything survived such a catastrophic event or really what is must have been like. And what an absolute disaster it was! It will then come as no surprise that the author was a support for the Jurassic World movies. I have learned a lot in the past several years about the misconceptions most of us share in regard to mass extinction events and the mammal's place in this. Mammals were not stagnant and all the major lineages were present prior to extinction, they were just able to diversify to a greater degree once the dinosaurs left.
I do think the premise started to be a little bit tired once she explores further and further from the day of the impact, but I still liked it. Also, you'd be remiss if you skipped the appendix. It is long, but it's an interesting read into how she developed her narratives- not just chunks of bibliographies and boring walls of texts.
Fun fact: Riley Black is the same author of Skeleton Keys, I reviewed earlier. It seems the author is trans and the name is very different. If you're a Twitter follower, she is pretty funny and definitely quirky
https://twitter.com/Laelaps. I sort of hope she can imbue some more humor into her future books given her propensity for silliness in her tweets. -
This was incredible! So descriptive and, honestly, devastating.
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Riley Black’s very enjoyable book charges through the last day of the Cretaceous and the first million years of the Paleocene with a mix of science and informed speculation. Each chapter looks at a different time, from a day before the Chicxulub impact until a day one million years later, through the imagined experiences of animals who are believed to have lived during each period. The accounts are of course fictionalized, but each chapter is tied to a corresponding appendix that takes a closer look at the science supporting the speculation. (This was a “two book mark” read for me—after I read each chapter, I jumped back to the appendix to learn more about what’s really known and what’s just a plausible guess.).
I came away from the book with a better understanding of how immediate the extinction was. Unlike the other four great extinctions that took millennia or even millions of years to complete their work, the asteroid strike at the end of the Cretaceous wiped out almost all of the non-avian dinosaurs within the first 24 hours of impact. Survival was determined by an animal’s behavioral repertoire—species that by their nature burrowed underground or lived in the water had a far better chance of surviving than the non-avian dinosaurs who had literally no place to hide (and absolutely no behavioral inclination to seek shelter). The ejecta from the impact heated up the atmosphere like an oven and set forest fires around the world, burning and baking most dinosaurs and large animals. Three years of global winter and years of acid rain disrupted land and ocean food chains, killing off most of the survivors of the initial catastrophe.
The slate was wiped clean in a day and a few decades, and we are here because of that contingency. If the asteroid had missed the earth or had hit on land or in an ocean instead of in a coastal area, we wouldn’t be around to reflect on the point—and dinosaurs might still rule the earth. -
4-4.5/5 stars
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me an audio-arc. I thought it was a solid narration, but nothing too exceptional.
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Dr. Riley Black is a unique and captivating book that tells the story of the dinosaurs' extinction through the lens of individual animals and their experiences during the different phases of this catastrophic event. The book's structure is a remarkable feat in storytelling, as it focuses on points in time that get progressively closer to the present day. This approach allows readers to understand the context of each moment in time, the conditions that prevailed, and how life had to adapt and respond.
One of the most impressive aspects of the book is how Dr. Black weaves her own trans identity into the narrative. She discusses how the societal norms of gender identity and expression have evolved and changed over time, paralleling the changing environment and conditions that the animals faced during the extinction event. The author's own experiences give the book a personal and emotional dimension that is rarely seen in scientific writing.
Dr. Black's use of individual animals to illustrate the changing conditions of each time period is a stroke of genius. By focusing on the story of one creature at a time, readers can understand how environmental factors, such as climate change and the impact of the asteroid that led to the extinction, affected the entire ecosystem. The book's structure creates a powerful and emotional arc that keeps readers engaged and invested in the fate of each animal.
While the book is accessible and enjoyable to a general audience, the last section of the book delves into the science behind each narrative. Dr. Black provides a detailed explanation of the research and data that went into crafting each story, making it an excellent resource for those interested in the more technical aspects of the subject.
As a planetary scientist who studies impact cratering, I found the book's intersection of this process with life on Earth to be particularly fascinating. Dr. Black's ability to seamlessly integrate different fields of study into a coherent narrative is a testament to her skill as a writer and scientist.
In summary, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs is an excellent example of a well-executed science book. Dr. Black's ability to combine personal experiences, scientific research, and storytelling creates a compelling and creative read. The book is accessible to a broad audience while still providing detailed scientific explanations for those who seek them. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the story of the dinosaurs' extinction and the intersection of science and personal identity.
I used ChatGPT to help write this, but my main thoughts remains the foundation of the review.
Check out my video review.
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I loved this. This book was completely fascinating and gave me a lot of things to think about with regards to evolution, life, change, etc.
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Highly recommend if you have any interest in dinosaurs or Earth's history at all.
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"Life has no plan or direction. Life is not seeking a way and burrowing into those cracks and crevices with any thought of tomorrow. But I think pretentious as he could be, the fictional Dr. Malcolm was sidling up to a different formulation, one that includes constraint and possibility, growth and death. And it is simply this. It's the lesson that those million years between the Age of Dinosaurs and Age of Mammals teaches us: If there's a way, life will find it." -
The pretend nature documentary narrative just doesn't work. Plus, the title is misleading. Most of the book covers the time after the dinosaurs disappeared.
Disclaimer: I received this book through Giveaways. -
I can’t think of many things scarier than the K-Pg extinction. It’s always been something that gives me chills to think about. Our brains aren’t made to grasp an apocalypse on that scale, and what’s always struck me is the absolute freak nature of it: if anything had gone slightly different the last 65 million years would be completely unrecognisable.
This was a really interesting book in detailing before and after the asteroid hit. The first third of the book paints a picture of Hell Creek in the days preceding the asteroid impact, while the remaining chapters detail the aftermath (one hour after impact, one year after impact, and so forth into a million years). While the main focus is on Hell Creek, each chapter also contains a section on a different area of the planet, showing the aftermath on a global scale.
It’s quite a unique perspective as most books on dinosaurs mark the end of the Cretaceous as the end of the dinosaurs, while that’s decidedly not true. This book not only talks about the avian dinosaur survivors, but also the impact this event had on marine reptiles, insects, flora and fauna as well as, of course, mammals. -
Absolutely brilliant balance of creative license and a scientist's expertise, this nonfiction work weaves together the best of both worlds.
Black is a strong storyteller who combines passion for the topic with a flair for the dramatic. Extensive footnotes support the work but don't slow it down. The chronological perspective of what likely happened after the Yucatan strike was a fascinating read.
A really unique and thought-provoking work. -
So this was an interesting read. I am more just "meh" about it though. The overall book was interesting but I felt it was a little lackluster. I think this might be because of the writing style. I felt at some points it was overly descriptive and then not enough at other parts. I also felt like the writing was too flower-y for me which I didn't think this would have since it was a nonfiction. The conclusion was nice if not a bit too long. I think the book would have been better if the formatting had been improved, some chapters dragged on too long while others were too short.
Highly recommend to anyone who loves Dinosaurs and all that type of stuff!
