I enjoyed Steve Brusatte's books about dinosaurs and mammals, but I got excited when I realized he had written about birds. This book melds two of my lifelong passions, birds and dinosaurs. My father used to tell me stories about my toddler years, when I vibrated with excitement when we heard owls calling and when I knew the names of “all the dinosaurs” by the time I was three.
Brusatte traces the evolution of the small coelurosaurs as they grew feathers and shrank, eventually morphing into what we now call birds. I haven't been concentrating on dinosaur research for the last decade, so there was a lot of new-to-me information. I used to teach the dinosaur section of docent training at our local zoo and really enjoyed keeping up to date. I hope to return to this habit.
Brand new to me was the section on fossil birds following the big extinction event that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. This is a rapidly changing field of study and I am smitten. I haven't read Nature or The Journal of Evolutionary Biology for ages, but I plan to pay attention again.
Then there are the fossil birds that are more recent: the Elephant Birds, the Moas, the Terror Birds, etc. Plus birds like the Dodo which went extinct during historical times. I loved the chapter on flightless birds, especially the DNA studies and their classification. Penguins are a favourite bird family of mine, so I share an interest with the author's five year old son. Here, too, there was new information.
I can see where I will want to read this book again in the future to cement the new data into my aging brain. I will also pursue some of these topics with other books. I am so glad that I read this and remembered the pleasure of these pursuits. And of course I will continue to enjoy watching our surviving dinosaurs, our feathery bird friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment