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  • The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

  • The Untold Story of a Lost World
  • By: Steve Brusatte
  • Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
  • Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (110 ratings)

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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

By: Steve Brusatte
Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
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Publisher's Summary

Sixty-six million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth. Today a new generation of dinosaur hunters, armed with cutting-edge technology, is piecing together the complete story of how the dinosaurs created a hugely successful empire that lasted for around 150 million years. 

In this hugely ambitious and engrossing story of how dinosaurs rose to dominate the planet, using the fossil clues that have been gathered using state-of-the-art technology, Steve Brusatte, one of the world's leading palaeontologists, follows these magnificent creatures from the Early Triassic period at the start of their evolution through the Jurassic period, to their final days in the Cretaceous and the legacy that they left behind. 

Along the way, Brusatte introduces us to the cast of new dinosaur hunters and gives an insight into what it's like to be a palaeontologist whose job it is to hunt for dinosaurs. He offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable discoveries he has made, including primitive human-size tyrannosaurs, monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex, and feathered raptor dinosaurs preserved in lava from China. 

At a time when Homo sapiens has existed for less than 200,000 years and we are already talking about planetary extinction, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a timely reminder of what humans can learn from the magnificent creatures who ruled the earth before us. 

©2018 Steve Brusatte (P)2018 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd

What listeners say about The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A summary without a thesis

This book is recommended as a summary of the current thinking on dinosaurs organised around a timeline of their time in Earth. Beyond this it, it had very little to say. Unlike the Robert Bakker book of the 1980s, it advanced no interesting new thesis. Furthermore, it was peppered with pastiche descriptions of characters from paleontology that made me cringe. By the end, it had undermined my interest in dinosaurs, since it indicated no current debates and read like an apologia for a discipline that had slipped into dullness

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great listen

Highly enjoyable, engaging and easy listening. Brusatte does a great job bringing the many characters both extinct and present to life. narration was good and never impeded the story. I liked how the auther brought himself into the story talking about his mentors, colleagues and expeditions he went on giving it a more personal flavour. Strongly recommend.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A whole world revealed.

As a life long student of the natural world I seek out areas of ignorance..When browsing Audible I saw this book and recognized I knew little about dinosaurs.
This well constructed book has lead me through a new world with humor and good pacing.
Highly recommend.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

So good!

So in-depth, so fantastic and a timely reminder at the end, thankyou, think ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ but for Dinosaurs

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A very enjoyable read with interesting stories and details of dinosaurs, a must read

A excellent read, great stories and details about dinosaurs, couldn’t stop listening as the writer told me back to the time of the dinosaurs

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

fantastic!

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is such a fantastic book to listen too! it's well worth the listen and I highly recommend it

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great listen for any dinosaur lover

Steve’s knowledge and story telling make this book hard to stop. A must read for any dinosaur lover

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Well told story, enjoyable anecdotes

Very much enjoyed this, improved my dinosaur knowledge, would have liked a little more repetition and summary overview to help keep it in my brain, but brought out the inner kid in me and thoroughly loved the story.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Full of current knowledge

Very informative and enjoyable. lots of Dino facts interspersed with stories of the key characters in the discovery of dinosaurs

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Managed to make dinosaurs boring

I can’t tell if it is the narrator or the author who do a disservice to this book but the combination has actively made me cringe several times during listening.
The author’s focus on himself and his own experiences comes at the expense of interesting information and stories about dinosaurs. Which you know, is what I expected given the title.
In an effort to make his experiences as a palaeontologist more exciting he has included inane, out-of-place detail about people and word choices that feel as though he is teaching a class of 5th graders.
If you’re going to make this an autobiography, sell it like that. If you want to talk about prehistoric times, market it like that. This hybrid doesn’t work, it doesn’t told my attention and the author does nothing to improve it.
In fact, he amplifies to ‘talking to a child’ aspect and it ends up sounding like many hours of a man telling you how cool his friends are.
Get the free 6-part series on dinosaurs on Audible, it was much better.

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