Palaeontologist explains his role in showing feathered dinosaurs to the world
- Steve Brusatte, author of the bestselling ‘The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs’, explains how he fell in love with fossils
- Every week, Talking Points provides an easy-to-read story with worksheets to test your comprehension
Fossils uncovered in China revealed that many dinosaurs had feathers, but media like “Jurassic Park” hasn’t shown this feature until recently. Photo: AFP / Ministry of Land and Resources of China / Chuang ZhaoReflect: When you think of dinosaurs, what do you imagine?
Imagine hunting down a giant dinosaur with a long nose. Its nickname is “Pinocchio rex” because it is related to the Tyrannosaurus rex. This was one of the most incredible discoveries that American palaeontologist Steve Brusatte ever made.
In 2014, he worked with the late Lu Junchang to find a 66-million-year-old fossil of “Pinocchio rex”. Brusatte described Lu as “one of China’s great dinosaur hunters”.
Brusatte is a 39-year-old professor of palaeontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh in Britain.
He has been to China many times because it has many ancient animals to discover. Thirty years ago, a farmer in northeastern China found a dinosaur skeleton “with a coat of fluffy stuff”.
“Before these fossils were found, dinosaurs were depicted in art and movies as ... reptiles,” Brusatte said. Reptiles’ bodies are covered in scales. But the discovery of this fluffy dinosaur skeleton changed everything.
“These fossils proved once and for all that today’s birds evolved from dinosaurs,” he said.
“Today, we know that many had feathers and looked and acted much more like birds.”
Humble beginnings
Before Brusatte began travelling the world for fossils, he was a growing up in the United States. He learned about dinosaurs from his brother, Chris.
“Chris turned his bedroom into a dinosaur museum,” Brusatte recalled. “He had all the Jurassic Park toys, and we watched Jurassic Park all the time. Over time, his interest became mine.”
Now, even though his job mainly involves teaching and research, he also spends time digging up dinosaur bones.
“If you caught me a few days ago, I would have been teaching. If you catch me in a few months’ time, I might be out in the desert,” he said.
Educating the public
As a palaeontologist, Brusatte also enjoys teaching people about dinosaurs.
In 2020, he gave advice for Jurassic World Dominion. He asked the director to include feathered dinosaurs for the first time in a Jurassic Park film.
“It has been one of the joys of my career,” he said.
Brusatte has also written books about dinosaurs and mammals. Now, he is writing about birds.
“When I’m writing these books, I’m thinking about me as a 15-year-old,” he said. “I tried to tell stories about science, fossils, and the people studying them without getting too technical.”
The palaeontologist hopes people can see how fossils are related to problems we face today – for example, climate change.
“Dinosaurs and other fossils are real animals that dealt with real moments of climate and environmental change, and we can learn a lot from them,” he said.
To test your understanding of this story, download our printable worksheet or answer the questions in the quiz below.
palaeontologist 古生物學家
someone who studies fossils
fossil 化石
the parts of a dead animal or a plant that become hard after thousands of years
evolution 進化
the process of animals, plants and other organisms changing over millions of years
technical 專業
involving special knowledge in a subject that might be complicated for most people to understand