Riley Black has been heralded as ‘one of our premier gifted young science writers’ and is the critically acclaimed author of Skeleton Keys, My Beloved Brontosaurus, Written in Stone, When Dinosaurs Ruled and Deep Time. Her work has appeared in Science, The New York Times, Nature, Smithsonian and more. Black also has a strong online presence, connecting with over 27,000 followers on Twitter, and has written on nerdy pop culture for websites like Slate, io9 and the Guardian. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.
A marvellous look at what happened after the asteroid hit Earth
will make readers feel like a kid discovering dinosaurs for the
first time. Black blends the intricacies of science with masterful
storytelling for a cracking, enchanting read
**
Immerse yourself in the last moments of the dinosaur empire, as
Riley Black weaves a tale of destruction, survival and rebirth in
the wake of a killer asteroid. You feel what T. rex and Triceratops
felt as their world ended in an apocalypse of fire and famine on
the single worst day in Earth history, and what our mammal
ancestors felt as they emerged on the other side, in a ghostly void
ripe for renewal. This is pop science that reads like a fantasy
novel, but backed up by hard facts and the latest fossil
discoveries. Black is pioneering a new genre: narrative
prehistorical non-fiction
*Steve Brusatte, Personal Chair of Palaeontology and Evolution at
the University of Edinburgh and Sunday Times-bestselling
author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs*
This book is as vivid as a fairy-tale, brought to life by Black's
scientifically informed imagination. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs
reveals the links between the deep past and present-day ecosystems.
Black guides you through Earth's darkest hours – when an asteroid
decimated the thriving dinosaurian world – and out the other side
into a bright new evolutionary landscape. Facts are woven deftly
into the narrative, parachuting you back in time to watch events
unfold first-hand. This tale could be bleak, but Black turns our
planet's interstellar wound and subsequent transition into a story
of hope and resilience. Mostly told from the animals' perspectives,
you share the experiences of a host of organisms including mammals,
insects and plants. It's Call of the Wild meets Armageddon
*Elsa Panciroli, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the
Oxford University Museum of Natural History and author of Beasts
Before Us*
While the human endeavour of palaeontology is infused into every
page of this book, Black skilfully shifts it to the background and
instead carries us straight into the forests, rivers and plains of
the Cretaceous and Paleogene world. Black's writing brings the last
days of the dinosaurs and the critical first days, years and
millennia afterwards to vivid life, portraying a dynamic world full
of living, breathing creatures. I'd never before thought about what
it must have felt like for a dinosaur to have lice, or for an early
primate to be woken by birdsong, but now these images are seared
into my memory, thanks to Black's skilful imagining of this lost
world
*Phoebe A. Cohen, Associate Professor in Geosciences at Williams
College, Massachusetts*
During the most famous mass extinction, the dinosaurs died and the
mammals survived. Riley Black brings every step of the crisis and
the recovery to life in this novelization of the crisis. See it
unfolding through the eyes of the victim dinosaurs and the survivor
mammals. The lightness and pace of the writing is founded on
thorough and careful analysis of the rich scientific evidence that
lies behind the story
*Michael J. Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at the
University of Bristol and author of Dinosaurs
Rediscovered*
This is top-drawer science writing
*Publishers Weekly, starred review*
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