The Last Days of the Dinosaurs

Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid some seven miles across slammed into the Earth, leaving a geologic wound over 50 miles in diameter. In the terrible mass extinction that followed, more than half of known species vanish seemingly overnight. But this worst single day in the history of life of Earth was as critical for us as it was for the dinosaurs, as it allowed for evolutionary opportunities that were closed for the previous 100 million years. In The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, Riley Black walks readers through what happened in the days, the years, the centuries and the million years after the impact. Life's losses were sharp and deeply felt, but the hope carried by the beings that survived sets the stage for the world as we know it now.

Riley Black has been heralded as 'one of our premier gifted young science writers' and is the critically acclaimed author of Skeleton Keys, My Beloved Brontosaurus, Written in Stone, When Dinosaurs Ruled and Deep Time. Her work has appeared in Science, The New York Times, Nature, Smithsonian and more. Black also has a strong online presence, connecting with over 27,000 followers on Twitter, and has written on nerdy pop culture for websites like Slate, io9 and the Guardian. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.