Ireallydigdinosaurs
Carlops, about 20 miles from Edinburgh, we were lucky enough to find a tiny brachiopod – a shellfish-type creature that is more than 400million years old.
As tiny as that was, about half the size of a pinky nail, it was incredible to uncover evidence of a creature which was part of Scotland’s ecosystem so long ago.
When Steve and his team head to Skye, which has developed a worldwide reputation as the real Jurassic Park with an incredible array of discoveries in recent years, they can make worldwide headlines with finds such as a T-Rex footprint and fossils of other predators.
He said: “Edinburgh has always been a leader in geology and earth sciences. The science of geology started here with James Hutton in the late 1700s.
“The Scottish landscape is a playground for geologists and Scotland is an amazing place for fossils but what there hasn’t been a lot of in Scotland are paleontologists working here. I jumped at the chance. We have established Edinburgh as a global centre for paleontology and have been having a lot of fun on Skye.
“It’s one of the only places where you can find fossils about 170million years old. There are a lot of research papers on it but it really surprised me the things we’ve been able to find. We keep finding new stuff, such as the T-Rex footprint.
“We also have evidence of small raptor types of dinosaurs on Skye but not enough bones to give them a new name.”
He added: “There are a lot of dinosaur books for kids but there’s not much out there for adults. There hasn’t really been a big mass-market dinosaur book in some time. But dinosaurs are in the news all the time, so why not?
“I would love it to become the book that explains dinosaurs the way Stephen Hawking explains black holes or Neil deGrasse Tyson explains astrophysics.
“It’s not overly technical and full of big science but at the same time it’s not dumbed down either and it tells a story.”
Steve says it’s a story of our past and present. He added: “The dinosaurs were a dynasty and we should think about them in the same way we think of ancient Rome or Game of Thrones.
“They came up from nothing. They had to wrestle power, conquer lands, slay their rivals and stay at the top. They had to keep evolving in concert with a world that was always changing – with continents breaking apart, sea levels changing, temperatures going up and down, and volcanoes erupting. “Then ultimately, the collapse. They fall very suddenly when a six-mile asteroid falls out of the sky and hits the Earth with the force of over a billion Hiroshima bombs. “That killed off dinosaurs, except the birds who evolved from dinosaurs and are still with us. “People think dinosaurs are really cool but lived so long ago. We should care as it’s the story of evolution, how the Earth changed over time and how species have responded to climate change and evolution.”
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, by Steve Brusatte, is out now on Macmillan Books, and costs £20.