Dead dinosaurs still hold appeal

If you’re like me, you’ve been doing more reading these days. Or watching more Netflix (no judgment).  

Full disclosure: I tend to read material that some might call dry. Books on economics, politics, and science... they all fascinate me. And to my daughter’s dismay, this means my progress in the Harry Potter seven-book series has come to a standstill. I'm stuck on page 142 of book three...

But if you’re an adult who once had a fascination with prehistoric beasts, I would recommend The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, by Steve Brusatte. I’ll try to contain my excitement, but it really blew my mind. Before this book, I had little understanding of these incredible creatures.

I had no idea dinosaurs only became dominant during the Jurassic period, for example, narrowly beating out the ancestors of our modern-day crocodile. In the preceding Triassic, dinosaurs only played a minor role, where they were picked on by some menacing crocodile-like beasts. Sure, crocodiles endured in the long run, but does it really matter? Are there museums dedicated solely to crocodiles? I think not! 

The Jurassic period saw an explosion in dinosaur species and sizes, including the sauropods, the largest land animals to ever roam the earth. They were incredibly diverse and huge; animals like the diplodocus, brontosaurus, and brachiosaurus (enunciate the words slowly, it’s such a pleasure to say them aloud). The largest of them weighed over 50 tons. To give some perspective, the largest elephants on earth weigh seven tons. 

So how could they support themselves? They had lungs like birds, scientists suspect, taking in oxygen both through inhaling and exhaling. This allowed them to support their large bodies and keep cool, with respiratory sacs ventilating their gigantic bodies. 

Not to give too much away, but birds are actually the direct descendants of dinosaurs. According to Brusatte, they are dinosaurs. If you’re having trouble making that leap in thinking, think of an ostrich. In body and form, it’s much like the two-legged theropods that once roamed the world – those fearsome carnivores like the Tyrannosaurus Rex that were actually covered with an early form of feathers. Yes, feathers! 

The T. rex used the same breathing mechanism as birds to ambush its prey with sudden bursts of energy. While it lacked the ability to run fast, it had the nimbleness we would normally not attribute to creatures of its size. The T. rex grew at a phenomenal rate, putting on 1,700 pounds per year until it reached its top size of seven tons by age 30. It grew fast and lived hard, with each of its dagger-like teeth exerting three thousand pounds of pressure – three times that of a lion’s bite!  

And it may not have been the brainless brute we once thought. Recent discoveries have shown dinosaurs like the T. rex to have large brains, to brood over their nests and to protect their young. Social animals, they were thought to hunt and travel in groups.  

Dinosaurs were incredibly diverse, as evidenced by the vast number of new species identified each and every year. Discoveries are made almost every day throughout the world. The more we dig, the more we discover. 

So how could they all disappear at roughly the same time?  

Well, it turns out that a ten-kilometre wide asteroid (or comet) does a lot of damage. Brasette describes in detail how its impact would expel the same energy as a billion nuclear bombs. Upon striking the earth at the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, it caused earthquakes as far away as Europe and tsunamis that reached the Atlantic coast, annihilating every living thing within a 1,000-kilometre radius. It’s widely believed the consequent nuclear winter led to the death of every one of those poor prehistoric creatures... Except for the birds, of course. 

The bird-watchers of the world can be thankful for that.