The story of the emergence of mammals is told with elan in a clear, engaging book – with a nasty sting in the tale for us humans
A sail-backed Dimetrodon looked like a primitive dinosaur, but was a reptile-like precursor to mammals
Daniel Eskridge / Alamy Stock Photo
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
Picador
ANYONE writing about mammals faces a key challenge: not making it about us. Humans are mammals of course, and it is easy to present the tale of mammalian evolution as inexorably leading to our arrival. Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte deftly avoids this problem in his new history of mammals by leaving almost all mention of humans to the final pages, where we come in as, essentially, …