The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World in Science and Inquiry

Dec 28, 2024 Tomislav rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-stars, science

Riley Black is a science writer, focusing on topics of natural history, especially dinosaurs. She is not an academic paleontologist, but is a widely recognized popularizer of the field. This relatively recent book fictionalizes and narrates impacts of the asteroid strike near Cicxulub, 66 million years ago. That marked the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs along with many other lifeforms, and is a critical inflection point in the history of life on Earth.

Rather than a chronology of the history o Riley Black is a science writer, focusing on topics of natural history, especially dinosaurs. She is not an academic paleontologist, but is a widely recognized popularizer of the field. This relatively recent book fictionalizes and narrates impacts of the asteroid strike near Cicxulub, 66 million years ago. That marked the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs along with many other lifeforms, and is a critical inflection point in the history of life on Earth.

Rather than a chronology of the history of discoveries and theorization, the book is an engaging narrative of what the world was like before, during, one hour later, one day later, one month later, one year later, one hundred years later, one thousand years later, one hundred thousand years later, and one million years later. The amount of detail necessary to dramatize this required some speculations, which Black respectfully distinguishes and reasonably justifies in a lengthy later chapter called 鈥淎ppendix.鈥� There is also one short autobiographical chapter called 鈥淐onclusion.鈥� that felt intrusive as if it should have been a forward or afterward.

More or less by coincidence, I had just finished reading Stephen Baxter鈥檚 science fiction novel Evolution, which took up the same imaginative challenge, over 20 years earlier. The near-sister of Baxter鈥檚 anthropomorphized early primate purgatorius even shows up here for a few pages. Of course, there have been discoveries and revised theorization since 2002, this is considerably more detailed adhering more closely to the science (Evolution is also SF), but it is essentially the same sequence of major events. I wish Baxter鈥檚 work had been recognized in this book.

A recurring theme is that in the aftermath of a mass extinction, evolution drives not simply a restoration by new species competing into pre-defined niches. Survival by advantage and by luck created the opportunity for diversification by the most flexible species, and the new inter-species relationships we see today. In one example we care about, primates would not have become humans. It was a perspective that expanded my understanding of natural history. The purpose of reading it was more inspirational than fact-learning. 4 陆 stars, rounded up.

Riley Black is a frequent guest on radio programs such as Science Friday and All Things Considered, where I have heard her recently, not realizing I would soon be reading her book. More info at . ...more

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