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The Rise and Reign of the Mammals

A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us

Steve Brusatte

$24.99

Paperback

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English
Picador
31 October 2023
'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'

'In this terrific new book, Steve Brusatte . . . brings well-known extinct species, the sabre-toothed tigers and the woolly mammoths, thrillingly back to life' - The Times

The passing of the age of the dinosaurs allowed mammals to become ascendant. But mammals have a much deeper history. 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.

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.

Out of this long and rich evolutionary history came the mammals of today, including our own species and our closest cousins. But today's 6,000 mammal species - the egg-laying monotremes including the platypus, marsupials such as kangaroos and koalas that raise their tiny babies in pouches, and placentals like us, who give birth to well-developed young - are simply the few survivors of a once verdant family tree, which has been pruned both by time and mass extinctions.

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.

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.

By:  
Imprint:   Picador
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 197mm,  Width: 153mm,  Spine: 33mm
Weight:   362g
ISBN:   9781529034233
ISBN 10:   152903423X
Pages:   528
Publication Date:  
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  ELT Advanced ,  Primary
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Author Website:   https://twitter.com/SteveBrusatte?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Professor Steve Brusatte is a palaeontologist on the faculty of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He grew up in the Midwestern United States and has a BS in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago, a MSc in Palaeobiology from the University of Bristol (UK), and PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Columbia University in New York. Steve is widely recognized as one of the leading palaeontologists of his generation. His 2018 book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, was a Sunday Times bestseller, and he is the science consultant for Jurassic World 3, the third film in the Jurassic Park franchise.

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

The epic story of how our mammalian cousins evolved to fly, walk, swim, and walk on two legs . . . [Brusatte's] deep knowledge infuse[s] this lively journey of millions of years of evolution with infectious enthusiasm. -- <span>Neil Shubin, bestselling author of <i>Your Inner Fish</i> and University of Chicago paleontologist</span> A fascinating account of how mammals survived the great extinction that destroyed the dinosaurs and evolved to their current position of dominance. A worthy sequel to [Steve Brusatte's] The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs. -- <span>Venki Ramakrishnan, 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry and Cambridge University biologist</span>


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