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The 250-million year rise and fall of the dinosaurs | Steve Brusatte

Big Think | July 6, 2026



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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.

0:00 Chapter 1: The rise and fall of dinosaurs
3:17 The first true dinosaurs emerge
8:01 Spectacular giants
15:06 The last morning
19:16 Chapter 2: T. Rex: The king of dinosaurs
22:30 Everything Jurassic Park got wrong
25:12 The mystery of the tiny arms
31:13 A new dinosaur species found every week
32:02 Chapter 3: The rise and reign of mammals
40:19 How flowers changed everything
44:34 Mammals go dumb, then huge
1:05:44 Should we bring them back?
1:09:21 Chapter 4: How birds became the last dinosaurs
1:23:54 Flight was an accident
1:37:31 What did dinosaurs sound like?
1:40:30 The pigeon is a dinosaur

Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/full-interview/brusatte-history-of-dinosaurs/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description

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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.

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Comments

This post currently has 48 comments.

  1. @No_one_in_particularr

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    8:23 Here's why I love science and why it's so much better and more reliable than all this pseudo-science, superstition and (no offense) religion: Only scientists admit that they don't know everything.

  5. @ChristianTrinity411

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    It seems like it would be very difficult to know much of anything in detail from the relics left behind since this was so long ago, no way to know for sure if any particular interpretation is correct, or even close to correct…the geology would be far easier to piece together, but the biology would seem very speculative…

  14. @anncosse

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    I can’t wait to read the new book! His first book was wonderful, interesting, and captivating. Had me heartbroken for the dinosaurs!

  16. @jaredguerra2222

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    This was truly an incredible lecture with phenomenal information. I hope a documentary comes out from this, if it hasnt already, because i really miss mentally time traveling like I just did. Thank you so much Dr. Brusatte.

  18. @realeyesrealizereallies6828

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    I have not seen convincing evidence that humans were responsible for mega fauna extinction in north and south America..There was extreme climate change at the time, the Younger dryas, which seemed to be a bottleneck for humans in the hemisphere..I have not seen evidence of a large enough human population to be responsible for mega fauna extinctions..It could be true, but maybe it's not..I would say that we are in the midst of a mass extinction right now, which we are certainly responsible for..

  22. @luizbotelho1908

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    The most amazing feature of mammals : How we, humans, can reconstruct with a great precision, half a bilion or more of the History of Life in Earth !. Truly amazing and frankly , unexpected!.Travelling back really in….TIME!.

  23. @AvanaVana

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    6:30 no discussion or even mention of the Carnian Pluvial Event and its massive effect on Triassic climate right at the same time the first dinosaurs evolved?

  28. @anxiousappliance

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    Wow – thank you for taking the time to make this video!!!

    Couple of thoughts:  

    Bills are also very evolutionarily malleable in a short period, so after the asteroid, it could quickly evolve to optimize for the new circumstances, like the Finches.  I tried to recue a Canada Goose gosling a little while ago, and had never seen a goose bill close up (yikes), it was so elegantly shaped with careful ducts around the nostrils, curves for aero, and tiny but purposeful "teeth". (when not flying, they are lawn mowers on legs) A beautiful thing.

    I could also see its feathers in a transition stage, from hair like, to final hooked (the other thing that makes it all work) flight feathers, as it was only a couple of weeks from being able to start flying. Wish it had had that chance.

    Back to asteroids: Also, in addition to seeds, I think about the insects – the massive unrelenting swarms of insects feeding off the dead, and opening new niches. Very tasty if that's your thing, and it is for many birds, and small mammals.

    I appreciate the Wright Brothers analogy. Another one is the film projector – the main component was derived from sewing machine mechanisms adapted for the main problem of have a stop go gate for each film frame and precise speed. The other thing about this, is that this process often happens simultaneously by different engineers finding the same solution. In flight there was also Whitehead, and Gustave Dumont – all getting it at the same time.

    So maybe instead of the central prototype bird, might be more of a case of many finding the same solution at the same time.  But why the same solution from different locations: because flight is so difficult and specific (unlike plodding around on land where so many things can work) and given a basic body protype type – theropod – the answer will be the same. Top down, ground up are not mutually exclusive.  

    To hold a bird is to marvel at how relentless evolution had to be to get something so light, so purposeful. How much pressure must there have been to drive things to this extreme. Giant theropds are great and all, but getting big on the ground, seems infinitely easier than what a sparrow is faced with. So, if people feel short changed that there isn't a 30 foot predator outside their home, look at a finch, and know, in many ways we have the best of the best. (And if you've experienced a 2 foot tall Canada goose in full rage – you know how lucky we are….)

    Anyway. – thanks again.

  31. @walkergarya

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    Creationists work very hard not to understand Evolution so they can continue to lie about this science. The Theory of Evolution is the foundation of all modern biology and has a huge body of evidence supporting it, something NO creationist can refute or match.

  36. @virgilpvl

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    1:19:30 literally every single life leading up to each of ours was a full journey, some more than others. Millions of lives in each lineage. Innumerable experiences. Lovely

  38. @MsHobbit

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    I love him very much I read his books on dinosaurs and mammals I can't wait to read "Story of the birds" . I love his passion on species, his eyes are smiling while talking about them. I hope he creates much more books, videos, lessons.. any opportunity to learn from him. I wish I studied paleontology-which was one of my choices for the college but I got higher score than those paleontology& archeology majors and I ended up in psychology which was my first choice because people want you to have a major that you can find a job (my country is like that paleontology doesn't have any opportunity and I was clueless how can I make it work in other countries since my family have no money to support me and I was afraid of world to thrive and be courageous. !and today, 17 years after high school, I am unemployed, I don't have a career. I wish I had a second chance to see a better world in animal kingdom and their history than today's chaotic world with horrible and rude homo sapiens 🥺

  40. @Mamvri

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    T Rex with feathers is definitely more scarier. Also imagine the sounds it would have made 🙂 I hope somehow in the future science will bring them back

  41. @musicmadgic6931

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    "Birds possess exceptionally high metabolic rates compared to mammals, primarily to support endothermy (warm-bloodedness) and the heavy energetic demands of flight." Unlike other slow metabolic reptiles crocodiles and turtles that survived due to lack of food needs, the birds made it due to their exceptionally fast metabolism. Obviously both are here so it clearly worked. But it does sort of "eat" away at both ends of the argument for post asteroid strike survival.

  42. @musicmadgic6931

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    So "we" are the ones who drove the Mammoth Steppe Biome into extinction. "It happened because of us", so said the Mr. Bombastic bone scratcher. Some of these textbook twerps are very impressed with themselves. "We" caused climate change and drove the Mammoth's to extinction, sure bubba sure.

  46. @Slavik-qh2xo

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    This is for kids. I wish we had an expert who didn't think we're stupid and had no knowledge. This should be called.. DINOS FOR DUMMIES 😂😂😂😂😂😂

  48. @TurboBlaster3000

    July 6, 2026 at 10:41 am

    interesting and fun video, however i think other accredited people would argue that life started in the sea and came to land not the other way around as stated in the video here, its known that the first animals started in the oceans then evolved to develop arms and legs and then crawled onto land.

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