'Steve Brusatte, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, brings mammals out from the shadow of their more showy predecessors . . . In this beautifully written . . . terrific book, he tells the extraordinary story of how mammals came to be and makes the case for them as creatures who are just as engaging as dinosaurs.' - The Sunday 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, 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 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, Brusatte weaves together the history and evolution of our mammal forebears, iconic mammals such as the mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers of which we have all heard, and fascinating species that few of us are aware of. In this fascinating and ground-breaking book, Steve Brusatte tells their - and our - story.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Terrific . . . a saga on the grandest scale . . . beautifully told . . . Brusatte brings well-known extinct species, the sabre-toothed tigers and the woolly mammoths, thrillingly back to life * The Times, 'Book of the Week' * Nothing short of a thriller, revealing the luck, evolutionary twists and near-apocalyptical catastrophes that have led to the mammals of today, us included . . . Fascinating revelations come thick and fast * Guardian * Stands out for its brilliant balance of scientific detail and lively, efficient storytelling * New Scientist * 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. -- Mark Cocker * The Spectator * Gorgeous book . . . fantastic writing, brilliant science. -- Alice Roberts, author of <i>Ancestors</i> Riveting . . . A real page-turner that proves science fact is more amazing than science fiction. * The Sun * 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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Interest Age: From 18 years
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ISBN-13
978-1-5290-3424-0 (9781529034240)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Professor Steve Brusatte is a palaeontologist on the faculty of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Steve is widely recognized as one of the leading palaeontologists of his generation. He has named and described over a dozen new species of dinosaurs and mammals, and led ground-breaking studies on how dinosaurs rose to dominance and went extinct and how mammals replaced them. His book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, was a Sunday Times bestseller, and he is the science consultant for the Jurassic Park film franchise.
