This is not a second review of Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. It is a follow-up essay that grew out of my earlier review: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte .

Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs leaves behind a useful inversion. Dinosaurs did not rule because they were superior. They colonized a void. The Permian-Triassic extinction wiped out the incumbents. They walked into empty rooms.