‘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.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
