The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us

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To illustrate his point, he notes that besides birds and pterodactyls, only one creature has evolved the ability to fly by flapping its wings: bats. The title is somewhat misleading, as Brusatte actually goes all the way to the early Triassic, before even the earliest dinosaurs, to trace the lineage of mammalian ancestry. These middle ear bones are the basis for yet another key mammalian feature: the ability to hear a wide range of frequencies, particularly in the upper register ( SN Online: 12/6/19).

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals - Pan Macmillan

The classic tree, championed by zoologist George Gaylord Simpson in 1945, was based on anatomical features. Brusatte’s first book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, is the standard for the history of the dinosaurs. The author is a practicing paleontologist and includes much about other scientists in the field and what is involved in finding the rare fossils that are our primary clues to how these creatures lived and changed over time. Panciroli's book stands out for its fantastic writing, though, so you cannot go wrong by reading them both.

For what we see today is but a very limited range of the mammals that have existed; in this fascinating and ground-breaking book, Steve Brusatte tells their – and our – story. Venki Ramakrishnan, 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry and Cambridge University biologist Riveting . That said, I'm not sure this book is as immediately compelling as its predecessor if for no other reason than mammals simply aren't as cool as dinosaurs. Of all the billions of species that have lived during the billions of years of Earth history, we are among the privileged few that can say such a thing.

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals - Google Books

What this means, perhaps disappointingly, is that saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths were not adversaries. 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. South America, Australia, and Madagascar experienced some unique species because of their isolation. Meanwhile, the smallest known dinosaur was about the size of a pigeon with most of them being much larger. Grassland, savannas, and prairies became widespread about 20 million years ago due to a dryer cooler climate.Humans, too, offer much to marvel at: as Brusatte points out, we are sentient apes that have changed the world.