These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. So, did dinosaurs go out with a bang or a whimper? What can we learn about resilience from the world’s deadliest mass extinction? And what really did come first – the chicken or the egg? Watch Simone Angel get eggs-istential with Steve Brusatte. He also enlivens science at Edinburgh University and is a New York Times bestseller, thanks to his pop science books, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Rise and Reign of the Mammals. Now the American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist is a consultant on the franchise, as well as the BBC series’ Walking with Dinosaurs, BBC Earth and Prehistoric Planet.

As a teenager growing up in the cornfields of the Midwest, he was inspired by Steven Spielberg’s iconic 1993 movie, Jurassic Park. Our first guest is Steve Brusatte, who tells awe-inspiring stories of evolution. But isn’t, obviously.Īs this season’s theme of TOPIA is The Egg, and we are trying to crack life’s mysteries, where better to start this series than roughly 66 million years ago? Specifically, when an asteroid hit the Earth, contributing to the devastating global extinction of the dinosaurs that ruled over the Earth, leaving birds as their only living descendants. We really are coming to you from the jungle – Belize, Central America – hence you’ll get to enjoy a howler monkey interruption that sounds like a Stegosaurus. Welcome to the very first episode in TOPIA’s new series of Cosmic Chats from the Jungle. The Earth has gone through so much but will endure for a long time. The question is will we? Steve Brusatte

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