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

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About half the this book covers the time period preceding the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction with the balance of the book describing mammal life afterward. Only one chapter is devoted to primates and humans. Not to mention the now-extinct megafauna of the last Ice Age. Woolly mammoths, sabertooth tigers - all that awesome megafauna that sadly is lost to us now. Steve Brusatte, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, brings mammals out from the shadow of their more showy predecessors in a beautifully written book that . . . makes the case for them as creatures who are just as engaging as dinosaurs.’ – The Sunday Times, ‘Best Books For Summer’

A whirlwind tour of mammal evolution. … Brusatte’s deep knowledge of the fossil record creates a rich tapestry in which each thread is a mammalian lineage. These interwoven threads dip in and out intermittently and sometimes disappear altogether in the finality of extinction, but those that remain always unspool in a bright burst of color to fill the gap.” — Science In The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, palaeontologist Steve Brusatte weaves together the history and evolution of our mammal forebears with stories of the scientists whose fieldwork and discoveries underlie our knowledge, both of iconic mammals like the mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers of which we have all heard, and of fascinating species that few of us are aware of. The number of mammal species continued to expand and diversify through the Paleogene era. South America, Australia, and Madagascar experienced some unique species because of their isolation. About three million years ago the drifting continent of South America made connection with North America which resulted in the extinction of many of the South American mammals because of new predators moving in from the northern continent.For the big-picture perspective, it’s hard to imagine a better place to start than Steve Brusatte’s fun-yet-magisterial The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, detailing mammals’ 325-million-year residency on earth. ... The author of a previous bestselling book on dinosaurs, American-born, Scotland-based Brusatte has emerged as something of a star in the paleontology world. It helps that he’s young, charismatic, and has good writing chops: each of the book’s sections begins by drawing us in with a cinematic 'clip.'" — Globe and Mail (Toronto) I’m one of those people who struggle to remember what came first, Triassic or Cretaceous, and who have no idea what the difference is between a phylum, a kingdom, and a family in biological classification. This book is for the ignorant like myself – detailed, yes, but also captivating and helping to learn. I’m not likely to retain all the information about cynodonts and gorgonopsians for long, but reading about them was actually great fun thanks to the Author’s engaging style. Also, thanks to the helpful timeline at the beginning of the book to which I referred every chapter or so, I might finally be able to remember my geological periods… The vivid descriptions like that of the ocean encroaching into the Carboniferous forests and making all the coal can certainly help my memory. Deeply researched and entertaining [...] Brusatte's real achievement is to show us that, for all its sheer weight of numbers and impact, Homo sapiens is just 'a single point, among millions of species over more than 200 million years." I can remember learning in grade school science that dinosaurs ruled the earth for a while until they disappeared; then the mammals took over. Years later that perception was reinforced while visiting the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History where I noticed a small model of a fur ball on the floor next to a display of a gigantic dinosaur skeleton. As I recall there was a label next to the fur ball indicating that it represented the typical mammal during the time of the dinosaurs.

With the extinction of the dinosaurs, the rise of mammals turned into a reign. Isolated on various land masses after the supercontinent Pangaea had fragmented, they were poised for a slow-motion taxonomic starburst that would play out over the next 66 million years. In the northern hemisphere, placental mammals replaced multituberculates and metatherians and rapidly evolved into primates and the odd- and even-toed ungulates. The latter two evolved giants: brontotheres, chalicotheres, and cetaceans. There is plenty of science in this book, and Brusatte doesn’t skimp on the use of those incredibly complicated animal names, but he adds just enough personal anecdotes and downright story telling to keep the narrative going. His highly fictionalized but factual tale of the little pregnant mini horse who fell into a lake and became a fossil is a delight. So is his encounter with a legendary Polish bone digger. His explanation of the infamous asteroid extinction event 66 million years ago, and other less catastrophic but life altering incidents, are so well told I listened to them twice. All is forgiven, though, for the excellent history of those animals defined by jaw, ear, and tooth structure as capital M Mammals. They start small, fitting themselves into the niches around the dinosaurs. The variety is impressive. I knew that mammal paleontologists had to be very interested in teeth and jaws (because those are the most frequent fossils). I had absolutely no idea of the sheer number of critters I'd never heard of. Or some of the remarkable fossils that have been found. It's a shame that the dinosaurs hog the limelight because their remains are so large and showy.In what is surely a hallmark of his love and enthusiasm for the field, Brusatte's bibliography has again been written as a narrative. It is like a chatty literature review in which he recommends books and papers, indicates where literature has become outdated, adds more technical details or clarifications, discusses where there is active debate and disagreement, and shortly touches on topics that he had to omit from the main narrative. Yes, this takes up more space than a regular reference section, and I am sure it is more time-consuming to write, but it is ever so useful. You could not wish for a better starting point if you wanted to read deeper into the technical literature. The book does bog down occasionally from an excess of detail. So many different species are described and sometimes they seem so similar it's difficult to separate them in your memory. I had to take occasional breaks from reading, to refresh my appetite for Latin names. But Brusatte does a pretty good job of sprinkling in stories -- some true, some imagined -- about his and others' experiences in the field, and about how these mammals might have lived. The story of the Age of Mammals is often told as the flip side to the dinosaurs’ demise. But the fossil record reveals that mammals were hardly newcomers: They arose around the same time as the dinosaurs, over 200 million years ago. Even during the Age of Dinosaurs, “in the smaller and hidden niches, it was already the Age of Mammals,” Brusatte writes. “Mammals were better than the dinosaurs at being small.”

It wouldn't be a history of mammals without covering the most infamous mammal of them all: Homo Sapiens. Our ancestry is no less fascinating than those of the long extinct animals that have captivated our imaginations for decades. Lastly, Brusatte wraps up his book by considering the future of mammals. You can likely guess that major discussion points there. Beginning with the earliest days of our lineage some 325 million years ago, Brusatte charts how mammals survived the asteroid that claimed the dinosaurs and made the world their own, becoming the astonishingly diverse range of animals that dominate today's Earth. Brusatte also brings alive the lost worlds mammals inhabited through time, from ice ages to volcanic catastrophes. Entwined in this story is the detective work he and other scientists have done to piece together our understanding using fossil clues and cutting-edge technology. The Jurassic and Cretaceous are the eras during which dinosaurs dominated the realm of large life forms while mammals were masters of the world of small creatures. During this period no mammal got bigger than a badger, but they were very diverse and thrived in their own world of hiding in the shadows, underground, and under bushes. Meanwhile, the smallest known dinosaur was about the size of a pigeon with most of them being much larger. Over these immense stretches of geological time, mammals developed their trademark features: hair, keen senses of smell and hearing, big brains and sharp intelligence, fast growth and warm-blooded metabolism, a distinctive line-up of teeth (canines, incisors, premolars, molars), mammary glands that mothers use to nourish their babies with milk, qualities that have underlain their success story. The Mammalian Revolution: during the Cretaceous period, the supercontinent, Pangaea, begins to break apart into northern and southern hemispheres. Mammals could now be found everywhere in the northern continent, but were mainly rodent-like. A group of mammals called Multituberculates would evolve to feed on the new flowering plants now appearing. Another mammals ground, the Therian mammals, would come up specialized molar teeth to handle insects now showing up to pollinate flowers. The Therians would give rise to modern day marsupial and placental mammals. The Monotreme mammals (like the platypus) would develop in the southern continents.Mammals and Changing Climates: during the Oligocene and Miocene periods, other recognizable mammals like rhinos, camels, horses would appear. Grasslands would develop and spread during a cooler and dryer climate. Mammals would form various adaptations for eating grass, like having longer teeth or constantly growing teeth. During this time, the Marsupials in the southern continents would start to die out, replaced by placental animals, except in Australia. Well, dinosaurs seem to fascinate almost everyone, and yes, the author of The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us (2022) has in fact not only discovered and named fifteen dinosaur species but University of Edinburgh palaeontology professor Stephen Brusatte has also worked as a scientific advisor for the Jurassic Park movies, which does kind of makes me appreciate the movies a bit more and the fact that actual palaeontologists served as advisers (and Stephen Brusatte is equally the author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World). Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.