'Steve Brusatte has a rare gift for bringing the distant past vividly and fascinatingly to life' - Bill Bryson
'Soaringly brilliant' – Alice Roberts
A New Scientist and Times most anticipated book of 2026
Billions of birds share the planet with us. With their flamboyant plumage and joyous dawn serenades, many of them are impossible to miss. But how did they get here, how did they break the bounds of Earth and begin to fly, and how does their legacy shape our world?
In delightfully energetic prose, expert palaeontologist Steve Brusatte takes us through their 150-million-year history, from their origins among small carnivorous dinosaurs to the 10,000-plus species that thrive today. Along the way, we meet fantastic birds from all around the world, some known only through fossils. There are elephant birds that stand as high as a basketball hoop and lay eggs as big as watermelons; demon ducks that weigh more than cows; aeroplane-sized seabirds that soar the world’s thermals; and predatory penguins the size of gorillas.
Lively, majestic and full of wonder, The Story of Birds will ensure you never see birds the same way again.
'The palaeontologist and author of the thoroughly enjoyable The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs turns his attention to our feathery friends and their deep past. Even stranger than you imagined' – The Times, 'Books to look out for in 2026'
'Dinosaurs did NOT go extinct! They are all around us, and there are more of them than ever . . . Steve Brusatte tells their amazing story with enthusiasm and brio' – Henry Gee
'Brusatte takes us on an eye-opening tour into the amazing world of birds . . . a thrilling addition to his hugely successful earlier books' – Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Prize-winning author of Why We Die
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Professor Steve Brusatte is a palaeontologist on the faculty of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He grew up in the Midwestern United States and has a BSc in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago, MSc in Palaeobiology from the University of Bristol, and PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Columbia University in New York. Steve is widely recognized as one of the leading palaeontologists of his generation. He has written over one hundred and fifty peer-reviewed scientific papers during his fifteen years of research in the field, named and described over a dozen new species of dinosaurs and mammals, and led groundbreaking studies on how dinosaurs rose to dominance and went extinct, and how mammals replaced them afterwards. Among his particular research interests are the evolutionary transition between dinosaurs and birds and the rise of placental mammals, and he is a noted specialist on the anatomy, genealogy, and evolution of the carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. His book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs was a Sunday Times bestseller, and he was the science consultant for Jurassic World 3.
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