biggest dinosaur Steve how many dinosaurs are in the country

And finally: that we are the lucky beneficiaries of an unprecedented tragedy. What is worst (or best) for us does not automatically trump what is worst (or best) for all. Second, that what happens to humans is not necessarily more important than what happens to other animals. First, that what happens to other animals matters for its own sake it can be good or bad, better or worse, even when no humans are involved. There is a humility, I imagine, that comes from dedicating your professional life to 30-foot gargantuans like Tyrannosaurus rex.īut it’s worth unpacking what the “worst day” assessment implies. Paleontologists live and breathe the long sweep of geological time, in which all human history is but a smudge on the edge of a far larger canvas. It’s natural that Black and Brusatte should think so. If an asteroid falls and no humans are around to hear it, can it really be a great catastrophe?

It’s a dinosaur-killing asteroid! But we are a culture that questions whether-in the absence of humans-a tree falling in a forest even makes a sound. Steve Brusatte, for instance, in The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, calls the collision “the single greatest catastrophe in Earth history, literally the worst day our planet has ever endured.” 2 The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Steve Brusatte, 2022 The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake? The completion of the atom bomb? The election of Donald Trump? No, Black means something a bit further back: the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs, careening 25 times faster than a bullet into the Yucatán Peninsula.īlack’s choice of Earth’s worst day seems to be fairly standard in paleontology. She places a slight caveat in the appendix, referring to the day of impact as “a strong contender for the single worst day in the history of life on Earth” Rather than the outright champion. “The worst day in history … the single worst day the planet ever experienced.” 1 The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World by Riley Black, 2022. It was “the worst single day in the entire history of life on Earth,” writes science journalist Riley Black.

Biggest dinosaur Steve how many dinosaurs are in the country