Black, author of last year's Short History of the Dinosaurs, has written a speculative and fact-based history of the dinosaur skeleton she first encountered at the NYC Museum of Natural History as a five year old. But this is not a straight recitation of paleolithic facts as we know them. Instead, there is a plot, a story arc, and a truly larger-than-life main character-the Tyrant Lizard Queen herself, aka Snaggletooth.
The author starts with Snags's fuzzy feathered beginnings when she kicked her eggshell open along with her nine siblings, who quickly became only five when her mother left them alone to hunt. She learned the skills of fighting and hunting quickly, and began her feeding with worms and other bugs, soon progressing to small prey as her mother eventually left her on her own. As she became larger and more skilled, other dinosaurs stayed out of her way and she was able to compete with other apex predators. Riley describes the history and genetics that combined to form the T. Rex that we know, her need, as a warm-blooded animal, to constantly eat, and how she coped with the changing climate of her time.
Her story ends when she mates with another T. Rex, and hatches baby dinosaurs of her own, but it's not the end of the book. Every chapter of Snaggletooth's adventure is then explained with examples from recent scientific interpretation of paleontological evidence. It also covers how Black used informed knowledge of other ancient and modern animal behaviors to speculate how her tyrannosaur would cope with everyday situations. It was also important for the author to create a female T. Rex protagonist, as she has noticed that the tyrannosaurus is usually a symbol of unbridled masculinity but the truth was that both were equally terrifying killers.
This was an exciting and fascinating read-it was harder to put down than most psych thrillers, and painlessly taught you something interesting-all hail the Queen.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
October 27, 2026
Reserve a physical copy - coming soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment