The empire that took 30 million years to build and one day to lose | Steve Brusatte

Become a Big Think member to unlock expert classes, premium print issues, exclusive events and more: https://bigthink.com/membership/?utm_... Steve Brusatte, the paleontologist behind Jurassic World's science and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Story of Birds, walks through what fossils actually prove versus what Hollywood invented. Brusatte traces dinosaurs back to footprints smaller than a house cat, found in Poland just after the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, and explains why those early survivors spent millions of years as background characters next to car-sized salamanders and armored crocodiles. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Steve Brusatte: Steve Brusatte is a paleontologist who hunts and writes about dinosaurs. He is on the faculty of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, but grew up in the Midwestern USA. Steve has traveled around the world digging up dinosaurs and, working with many international colleagues, has named more than 15 new species, including the tyrannosaur 'Pinocchio rex' (Qianzhousaurus) and the raptor Zhenyuanlong.