Illustrated by Kory Bing
281 pages
Published 2025
Read from August 2 to August 19
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
We need more paleobotany and paleoecology books. I’m in the process of writing a novel set partially in the Cretaceous, and there are so few avenues for learning what ancient environments would have been like. A particular textbook sells for $500 on eBay. Wikipedia has a couple useful pages, but even a ubiquitous Upper Cretaceous tree like Dryophyllum lacks its own entry. In fact, the most thorough online source of information about Dryophyllum that I can find appears to be a fandom wiki for a video game.
Heading into this book, I’d hoped for more in the vein of the closing chapters of Riley Black’s The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, which linked the Earth’s past with our own contemporary fights for personal autonomy and queer liberation. There are bits of that here and there; the introduction, in particular, can be quite lovely in its musings on life’s interconnectedness and interdependence. Certain chapters, such as the one on fall color in the Pliocene, are beautiful and evocative. The conclusion is, once again, especially impactful, a much-needed reflection of human diversity and possibility.
For the most part, though, Green offers more of the Raptor Red-adjacent pop science that characterized most of Last Days. It’s enjoyable, and Black covers many topics not often seen by the public at large, which is always welcome. This book is a nice first step for introducing the reading public to the plants of the past, but it’s only that — a first step. Let’s hope it starts a paleobotanical revival and leads to more in-depth books gaining publication.
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