The Story of Birds: A New History from Their Dinosaur Origins to the Present

by Steve Brusatte

From the renowned paleontologist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, a sweeping evolutionary history of birds, from their dinosaur origins to the 14,000 extraordinary species alive today.

Tens of billions of birds share the planet with us, an astonishingly diverse array of species that are present nearly everywhere humans call home—and many places we do not. With their flamboyant plumage, joyous dawn serenades, extraordinary aerial feats, they have captivated human imagination for millennia. Undeniably delicate creatures with hollow bones and thin skin protected by downy feathers, how did such a seemingly fragile species break the bounds of Earth and begin to fly, how have they survived millennia, and how does their legacy shape our world?

Hailed as “one of the stars of modern paleontology” (National Geographic), Brusatte begins his quest to the tell the story of birds by exploring how dinosaurs gradually developed the trademark features of birds one-by-one—feathers, wings, beaks, big brains, keen senses, and warm-blooded metabolisms. He investigates why birds were the only dinosaurs to survive the cataclysmic asteroid impact 66 million years ago and chronicles how these survivors rapidly proliferated in a barren landscape to produce the huge diversity of avian species we know today.

Along the way, we meet a variety of remarkable – now extinct – species:

• 10-foot-tall terror birds with beaks that sliced flesh
• 1.5-ton elephant birds that lived on Madagascar and laid eggs the size of footballs
• Pelagornithid seabirds with 20-foot wingspans
• A ferocious Jamaican ibis that used its wings as clubs to attack rivals

Yet, Brusatte also urges us to appreciate the extraordinariness of birds alive today – penguins that literally fly underwater, parrots that can mimic human speech and hummingbirds that hover mid-air and dive at 50 miles per hour.

A fascinating scientific history that unearths the origins of birds, The Story of Birds establishes the living legacy of this remarkable species.

Genres: Science

464 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication April 28, 2026

About the author

Author writes under the penname Stephen Brusatte as well.

Stephen Louis Brusatte (born April 24, 1984) is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, who specializes in the anatomy and evolution of dinosaurs. He was educated at the University of Chicago for his BS degree, at the University of Bristol for his MSc on a Marshall Scholarship, and finally at the Columbia University for MPhil and PhD. He is currently a Reader in Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to his scientific papers and technical monographs, his popular book Dinosaurs (2008) and the textbook Dinosaur Paleobiology (2012) earned him accolades, and he became the resident palaeontologist and scientific consultant for the BBC Earth and 20th Century Fox's 2013 film Walking With Dinosaurs, which is followed by his popular book Walking with Dinosaurs Encyclopedia. His most recent book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (2018), written for the adult lay person, won widespread acclaim, and was a New York Times bestseller.