The Story of Birds

From the bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, this is the engrossing story of the dinosaurs that live among us.

Billions of birds share the planet with us. With their flamboyant plumage and joyous dawn serenades, many of them are impossible to miss. But how did they get here, how did they break the bounds of Earth and begin to fly, and how does their legacy shape our world?

In delightfully energetic prose, expert palaeontologist Steve Brusatte takes us through their 150-million-year history, from their origins among small carnivorous dinosaurs to the 10,000-plus species that thrive today. Along the way, we meet fantastic birds from all around the world, some known only through fossils. There are elephant birds that stand as high as a basketball hoop and lay eggs as big as watermelons; demon ducks that weigh more than cows; aeroplane-sized seabirds that soar the world’s thermals; and predatory penguins the size of gorillas.

This deep-dive into the evolutionary origins of birds reveals them to be some of the best adapted and most fined-tuned animals to ever exist in our world. Lively, majestic and full of wonder, The Story of Birds will ensure you never see birds the same way again.

About the Author

Professor Steve Brusatte is a palaeontologist on the faculty of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Steve is widely recognized as one of the leading palaeontologists of his generation. Among his particular research interests are the evolutionary transition between dinosaurs and birds and the rise of placental mammals, and he is a noted specialist on the anatomy, genealogy, and evolution of the carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. His book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs was a Sunday Times bestseller, and he was the science consultant for Jurassic World 3.