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. Out of this long and rich evolutionary history came the mammals of today, including our own species and our closest cousins. 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. 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. īrings well-known extinct species, the sabre-toothed tigers and the woolly mammoths, thrillingly back to life’ – The TimesThe passing of the age of the dinosaurs allowed mammals to become ascendant. 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.
‘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.
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