Steve Brusatte discusses “The Rise and Fall of The Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World.” He will be joined in conversation by Michael LaBarbera.

A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. The event is free, but registration is requested here.

About the book: In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs” is a book for the ages.

Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”

An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs” will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.

About the author: Steve Brusatte is a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he completed his doctorate at Columbia University. He writes frequently for Scientific American, including the May 2015 cover story on the evolution of tyrannosaurs. His academic research has been published by leading journals including Science and Nature (“Untangling the dinosaur family tree,” November 2017), and he authored a leading paleontology textbook, “Dinosaur Paleobiology.” He is also the “resident paleontologist” for BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs program. A native of the Chicago area, he now lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Anne.

About the interlocutor: Michael LaBarbera is professor emeritus in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division and the Departments of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. LaBarbera’s research focuses on the biomechanics of marine invertebrates, though he has published on everything from the mechanical properties of an aboriginal fishing line to the aerodynamics of flying snakes. His teaching has won him the University’s coveted Quantrell Award and a Distinguished Educator/Mentor Award from the Division of the Biological Sciences. He has been featured in specials on PBS and Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel series “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman”.