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I absolutely ADORED Steve Brusatte's last book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, which came out in 2018. Indeed humankind and many of the beloved fellow mammals we share the planet with today–lions, whales, dogs–represent only the few survivors of a sprawling and astonishing family tree that has been pruned by time and mass extinctions. Indeed humankind and many of the beloved fellow mammals we share the planet with today--lions, whales, dogs--represent only the few survivors of a sprawling and astonishing family tree that has been pruned by time and mass extinctions. It is in Africa that hominids would get their start in walking and tool making and began to spread throughout the world. They – or, more precisely, we – originated around the same time as the dinosaurs, over 200 million years ago; mammal roots lie even further back, some 325 million years.
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte - Waterstones The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte - Waterstones
I learned so much from this book, though, and was captivated by stories of Thomas Jefferson making The Louisiana Purchase in part to look for living mastodons. Though mammals are seemingly familiar to us, Brusatte brilliantly reveals that their story is as fascinating and complex as dinosaurs. Never boring despite the deep dive in some mammalian characteristics (such as teeth and hearing bones). I knew that mammal paleontologists had to be very interested in teeth and jaws (because those are the most frequent fossils). Following on from The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, paleontologist Steve Brusatte turns his attention to mammals.Mammals and Changing Climates: during the Oligocene and Miocene periods, other recognizable mammals like rhinos, camels, horses would appear. I've previously read Brusatte's book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World. In the `Introduction: Our Mammalian Family,’ Brusatte details why mammals are appealing thus providing a strong explanation on why this group was the primary subject. This story was updated on June 28, 2022, to correct that the hammer and anvil are bones of the middle ear, not inner ear.
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals - Pan Macmillan The Rise and Reign of the Mammals - Pan Macmillan
How glorious is it that we breathe the same air as a blue whale, swim in the same waters, and gaze at the same stars? I blew through this in 3 days and may or may not have put off other important things to do so because I couldn’t put it down. Saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, and bears three times the weight of a grizzly are but a few of the creatures we learn about along the way. Two groups of animals would develop from the early amphibians: the Diapsids (reptiles and dinosaurs) and Synapsids (mammals).Other than the fascinating stories about the discovery of the fossils Brusatte describes, I particularly enjoyed the Ernest Thompson Seton-esque tidbits about the hypothetical lives of these animals. In Africa, mammals ranging from elephants, manatees, and aardvarks to golden moles, would be found to be more closely related to each other via DNA studies. Grassland, savannas, and prairies became widespread about 20 million years ago due to a dryer cooler climate.
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte - Waterstones
It was the Age of Dinosaurs, but in the smaller and hidden niches, it was already the Age of Mammals. I want people to come to appreciate our evolutionary history – where we come from, why we look the way we do, why we behave the way we do, why we have hair and feed our babies milk and we have the teeth we do and we have big brains and keen senses, and all of these things,” says Brusatte. Dinosaurs Die, Mammals Survive: heading into the Palaeocene, an asteroid hits the Earth, causing large scale extinctions, especially the non-avian dinosaurs. This book is for the ignorant like myself – detailed, yes, but also captivating and helping to learn. Along the way, Brusatte brings readers face to face with our distant ancestors, including the last common ancestor of mammals and reptiles: a small, scaly, swamp-dwelling creature that lived about 325m years ago.B/w photos show amazing fossils, Todd Marshall contributes both decorative chapter headings and explanatory artwork, and Brusatte's former student Sarah Shelley adds b/w diagrams, illustrating for instance the remarkable changes in jaw bones and how some of these were repurposed to become our inner ear bones!