Author(s): RILEY BLACK

Science

A fascinating exploration of the world's worst mass extinction and how it shaped all subsequent life on our planet. Picture yourself in the Cretaceous period. It's a sunny afternoon in the Hell Creek ecosystem of North America 66 million years ago. A Triceratops horridus ambles along the edge of the forest, enjoying this endless summer of the dinosaurs. But in a matter of hours, everything here will be wiped away. Lush verdure will be replaced with fire. Tyrannosaurus rex will be toppled from its throne, along with every other species of non-avian dinosaur no matter their size, diet or disposition. This is the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. As we watch, an asteroid some seven miles across is set to slam into the earth, leaving a geologic wound over fifty miles in diameter. In the terrible mass extinction that will follow, more than half of known species will vanish seemingly overnight in both searing fire and constricting cold. The dinosaurs will all but disappear as mammals rise to claim and reshape the planet, and you will be a witness to this fantastic transformation. In The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, Riley Black walks readers through what happened in the days, the years, the centuries and the million years after the impact, drawing from the latest science to track the sweeping disruptions that overtook Hell Creek and the rest of the planet. Even during a time of horrible destruction and loss, life will find a way. AUTHOR: 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. 15 b/w illustrations