Sign in with Facebook
Cav's Reviews > The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction and the Beginning of Our World
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction and the Beginning of Our World
by
by
"Catastrophe is never convenient.
The dinosaurs never expected it. Nor did any of the other organisms, from the tiniest bacteria to the great flying reptiles of the air that were thriving on a perfectly normal Cretaceous day 66 million years ago. One moment life, death, and renewal proceeded just as they had the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, stretching back through millions upon millions of years. The next, our planet suffered the worst single day in the entire history of life on Earth..."
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs was a decent look into the topic.
Author Riley Black (formerly Brian Switek) is an American paleontologist and science writer.
Riley Black:
The book opens with a good preface. Unfortunately, I was not a huge fan of the overall presentation. The author tries to write in a style that relates the ancient landscape to the reader, but I found my finicky attention wandering numerous times (sorry). Perhaps the book needed some more animations to bring much-needed context to bear. Although I should openly say that I have become extremely picky on how readable my books are.
Black continues the quote from the start of this review:
The author details Earth's 5 extinction level events, and pays particular attention to the KPG asteroid that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula, circa 65 million years ago; wiping out the dinosaurs.
The rest of the book flows in a somewhat chronological fashion, with chapters about a day after, a month after, 100 years after, and up to a million years after.
And, as mentioned in the book's epilogue, all life now can trace its lineage back in an unbroken ~3 billion-year string. From a single-celled organism; all the way up to us; in the present. It's pretty mind-blowing...
***********************
There is quite a lot of interesting information here. Unfortunately, there were too many very long scientific names, and too little context provided for me to properly enjoy this presentation. I feel like this book could have been a great documentary. The author seems to really know a lot about the subject.
I am a bit conflicted about how to rate this one, since there will likely be many people who really enjoyed it.
I have to rate my level of enjoyment, however, and that will see this one get a 3 stars. Rounded up to 3.5, and would still recommend.
The dinosaurs never expected it. Nor did any of the other organisms, from the tiniest bacteria to the great flying reptiles of the air that were thriving on a perfectly normal Cretaceous day 66 million years ago. One moment life, death, and renewal proceeded just as they had the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, stretching back through millions upon millions of years. The next, our planet suffered the worst single day in the entire history of life on Earth..."
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs was a decent look into the topic.
Author Riley Black (formerly Brian Switek) is an American paleontologist and science writer.
Riley Black:
The book opens with a good preface. Unfortunately, I was not a huge fan of the overall presentation. The author tries to write in a style that relates the ancient landscape to the reader, but I found my finicky attention wandering numerous times (sorry). Perhaps the book needed some more animations to bring much-needed context to bear. Although I should openly say that I have become extremely picky on how readable my books are.
Black continues the quote from the start of this review:
"In an instant, life’s entangled bank was thrown into fiery disarray. There were no warning signs, no primordial klaxon that would blare and send Earth’s organisms rushing to whatever refuges they might find. There was no way for any species to prepare for the disaster that came crashing down from the sky with an explosive force 10 billion times greater than the atomic bombs detonated at the end of World War II. And that was just the beginning. Fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the choking hold of an impactcreated winter that lasted for years all had their own deadly roles to play in what followed.
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, shortened 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 author details Earth's 5 extinction level events, and pays particular attention to the KPG asteroid that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula, circa 65 million years ago; wiping out the dinosaurs.
The rest of the book flows in a somewhat chronological fashion, with chapters about a day after, a month after, 100 years after, and up to a million years after.
And, as mentioned in the book's epilogue, all life now can trace its lineage back in an unbroken ~3 billion-year string. From a single-celled organism; all the way up to us; in the present. It's pretty mind-blowing...
***********************
There is quite a lot of interesting information here. Unfortunately, there were too many very long scientific names, and too little context provided for me to properly enjoy this presentation. I feel like this book could have been a great documentary. The author seems to really know a lot about the subject.
I am a bit conflicted about how to rate this one, since there will likely be many people who really enjoyed it.
I have to rate my level of enjoyment, however, and that will see this one get a 3 stars. Rounded up to 3.5, and would still recommend.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.
Sign In »
