J. D. Archibald 2011. Extinction and Radiation: How the Fall of Dinosaurs Led to the Rise of Mammals. xii + 108 pp. Johns Hopkins University Press. Price £39.00, US$65.00 (HB). ISBN 978 0 8018 98905 1.

Abstract

The extinction of the dinosaurs is an iconic event in Earth history that attracts continued attention from scientists and the public. Just when everyone thought that the case was closed and a giant meteorite implicated, as expressed in a ‘manifesto’ statement last year in Science (Schulte et al . 2010), signed by 41 distinguished authors, it turns out that everything is not so clear, as explained by Archibald et al. (2010), signed by an equally distinguished list of 29 authors. David Archibald's book reflects this somewhat cautious stance. He has lived through the brouhaha about the KT impact, and has been a constant commentator over the past thirty years, drawing …