While writing my book The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, I didn’t want to yada yada yada away a mass extinction. I had been guilty of doing that for decades. Initially, I thought that the extinction of dinosaurs happened suddenly; Tyrannosaurus was happily dining on Edmontosaurus filets when an asteroid struck the planet, yada yada yada. All the non-avian dinosaurs were gone and the Age of Mammals had started.
That story is nice and simple. There’s a clean break from a world filled with saurians and one replete with fuzzy beasts. But as I learned more about the pivotal event, I realized just how much I had overlooked.
