The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World: The Definitive Dinosaur Encyclopedia with Stunning Illustrations, Embark on a Prehistoric Quest!

by Steve Brusatte

Hadrosaurs and ceratopsians eating flowers. Smaller ornithischians feeding on shrubs, the pachycephalosaurs head-butting each other in tests of dominance. Poodle-size raptors prowling for salamanders, lizards, even some of our early mammal relatives, all of which are known from Hell Creek fossils. A variety of omnivores—Troodon and the freakish oviraptorosaurs—picking up whatever scraps the more specialized meat-eaters and plant-eaters forgot about. Other dinosaurs I haven’t yet mentioned, like the speed-demon ornithomimosaurs, and the heavily armored Ankylosaurus, fighting for their own niches. Pterosaurs and primitive birds soaring overhead; crocodiles lurking offshore in the rivers and the lakes. Not a sauropod to be found, and the King—the great T. rex itself—ruling over all of it. This was the Late Cretaceous of North America, the final flourish of the dinosaurs before disaster struck. Because of the wealth of fossils discovered by everyone from Barnum Brown to the teams from the Burpee Museum, it is the single richest dinosaur ecosystem known to science during the entire Age of Dinosaurs anywhere in the world, our best picture of how a variety of dinosaurs lived together and fit together into one food chain.