Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)

Imagine hunting down a gigantic, ferocious dinosaur with a long snout, nicknamed “Pinocchio rex”. This was one of the most incredible discoveries that American palaeontologist Steve Brusatte has ever made.

In 2014, he worked with the late Lu Junchang – whom Brusatte described as “one of China’s great dinosaur hunters” – to unearth this 66-million-year-old fossil of an animal closely related to the Tyrannosaurus rex. The professor of palaeontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh travels to China often because it is the “epicentre” of fossil discoveries.

Before the 39-year-old was traversing the globe in search of fossils, he was in rural Illinois, learning about dinosaurs from his little brother, Chris.

“[Chris] turned his bedroom into a little dinosaur museum,” Brusatte recalled. “We watched Jurassic Park all the time. He had over 100 books … And over time, I think Chris’ interest kind of became my interest.”

Brusatte and his family now live in Scotland, and his job largely consists of teaching and research. But the day-to-day life of a palaeontologist varies greatly.

“If you caught me a few days ago, I would have been teaching my undergraduate class. If you caught me in a few months’ time, I might be out in the desert, [digging up] dinosaur bones,” he said.

Teaching people about dinosaurs

After more than two decades since the start of his career as a palaeontologist, Brusatte has not only made some incredible discoveries, but he also plays a role in educating the public about dinosaurs.

In 2018, he wrote a New York Times bestselling book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs to tell people about these incredible creatures of Earth’s past. He has also been featured in several documentaries and had a hand in creating one of the Jurassic Park films.

“It has been one of the joys of my career working on the Jurassic World films,” Brusatte said. “These are blockbuster monster movies, not science documentaries, so the moviemakers will not always make perfectly scientifically accurate dinosaurs, and that is OK.”

Many people do not realise that dinosaurs looked and acted much like birds. But in 2020, Brusatte worked with a team of palaeontologists on the recent Jurassic World Dominion film which introduced people to feathered dinosaurs.

He hopes to show how fossils are relevant to the world, especially in regard to climate change: “Fossils are lessons from the past that can inform our future. Dinosaurs and other fossils are real animals that had to deal with real moments of climate and environmental change, and we can learn a lot from them.”

Use the crossword below to test your knowledge of the vocabulary words in the story.

Suggested answers

• Before you read: Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. They were killed off because of a meteor that hit the earth. (and other acceptable answers)

• Stop and think: He found a 66-million-year-old fossil of a gigantic, ferocious dinosaur with a long snout, nicknamed “Pinocchio rex”.

• Consider: Some of the dinosaurs in the film had feathers, which is more accurate for what they actually looked like.