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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ) Chapter 1: The rise and fall of dinosaurs  
[3:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=197s) The first true dinosaurs emerge  
[8:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=481s) Spectacular giants  
[15:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=906s) The last morning  
[19:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=1156s) Chapter 2: T. Rex: The king of dinosaurs  
[22:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=1350s) Everything Jurassic Park got wrong  
[25:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=1512s) The mystery of the tiny arms  
[31:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=1873s) A new dinosaur species found every week  
[32:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=1922s) Chapter 3: The rise and reign of mammals  
[40:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=2419s) How flowers changed everything  
[44:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=2674s) Mammals go dumb, then huge  
[1:05:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=3944s) Should we bring them back?  
[1:09:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=4161s) Chapter 4: How birds became the last dinosaurs  
[1:23:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=5034s) Flight was an accident  
[1:37:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=5851s) What did dinosaurs sound like?  
[1:40:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0VyaXjWXQ&t=6030s) The pigeon is a dinosaur

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.

Big Think: The 250-million year rise and fall of the dinosaurs | Steve Brusatte (7/3/2026)