Big Think has a video with Steve Brusatte, an American paleontologist, a professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Edinburgh, and author of a few pop-science books. Steve grew up in Ottawa, IL. He’s spoken to ESCONI in the past.

In this video, Steve discusses the origin and the evolution of dinosaurs, mammals, and birds. It’s a great summary of his three books – “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs”, “The Rise and Reign of the Mammals”, and most recently “The Story of the Birds”.

Steve Brusatte, the paleontologist behind Jurassic World’s science and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Story of Birds, walks through what fossils actually prove versus what Hollywood invented.

Brusatte traces dinosaurs back to footprints smaller than a house cat, found in Poland just after the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history, and explains why those early survivors spent millions of years as background characters next to car-sized salamanders and armored crocodiles.