Riley Black

Riley Black is a science writer and fossil enthusiast who turns paleontology into narrative nonfiction for general readers. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs reconstructs the world around the asteroid impact sixty-six million years ago, then follows ecological change from the preceding day to a million years afterward. St. Martin's Press gives the full subtitle as An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World, which captures the book's emphasis on recovery as well as disappearance. Black writes regularly about prehistoric life for publications including Smithsonian and National Geographic, and has worked with museums, field teams, and the Jurassic World franchise. The book received the 2023 AAAS/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Books. Rather than treating extinction as a single instant, Black organizes evidence about plants, mammals, marine life, and dinosaurs into a chronological account of how one biosphere gave way to another.