The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs tells the 230-million-year epic of these staggeringly fascinating prehistoric creatures, covering their small beginnings, spectacular golden periods, and stunning evolutionary success--before an unthinkable asteroid event brought everything to a screeching halt. But this history digs deeper, using numerous recent fossil discoveries and fresh understandings of genetics and evolution to show how we've gleaned so much about a long-lost world from mere fragments of fossil. Marshaling the evidence, award-winning author Riley Black reveals the startling relationships that dinosaurs shared with one another, the land they lived on, and other animal species. By conjuring a more complete picture of Earth in the age of the dinosaurs, she shows us how these massive monsters owe their rise to luck as much as to their cunning--and the many surprising ways they left an indelible mark on their dramatically changing world.