The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs: The 230-Million-Year Story of Their Time on Earth

The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs tells the 230-million-year epic of these staggeringly fascinating prehistoric creatures, covering their small beginnings, spectacular golden periods, and stunning evolutionary success--before an unthinkable asteroid event brought everything to a screeching halt. But this history digs deeper, using numerous recent fossil discoveries and fresh understandings of genetics and evolution to show how we've gleaned so much about a long-lost world from mere fragments of fossil. Marshaling the evidence, award-winning author Riley Black reveals the startling relationships that dinosaurs shared with one another, the land they lived on, and other animal species. By conjuring a more complete picture of Earth in the age of the dinosaurs, she shows us how these massive monsters owe their rise to luck as much as to their cunning--and the many surprising ways they left an indelible mark on their dramatically changing world.

The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.

Riley Black is the award-winning author of more than ten books about fossils, evolution, and dinosaurs. Her latest, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, won the AAAS/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Books, and her follow-up When the Earth Was Green will be published in 2025 by St. Martin's Press. When not penning books, Riley regularly writes about fossils for a variety of publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian, Slate, and more, with repeated appearances on radio and television programs such as All Things Considered, Science Friday, and NOVA. She has also acted as a science advisor on dinosaur projects for the Jurassic World franchise, and has given talks about the latest in paleontology at venues ranging from Yale University and the Houston Museum of Natural Science to the Tucson Festival of Books. She lives in Utah.