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

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars | 1,732 ratings

Price: 7.99

Last update: 12-24-2024


About this item

New from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs (“A masterpiece of science writing.” —Washington Post) and “one of the stars of modern paleontology” (National Geographic), a sweeping and revelatory history of mammals, illuminating the lost story of the extraordinary family tree that led to us.

We humans are the inheritors of a dynasty that has reigned over the planet for nearly 66 million years, through fiery cataclysm and ice ages: the mammals. Our lineage includes saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, cave bears three times the weight of a grizzly, clever scurriers that outlasted Tyrannosaurus rex, and even other types of humans, like Neanderthals. Indeed humankind and many of the beloved fellow mammals we share the planet with today—lions, whales, dogs—represent only the few survivors of a sprawling and astonishing family tree that has been pruned by time and mass extinctions. How did we get here?

In his acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs—hailed as “the ultimate dinosaur biography” by Scientific American—American paleontologist Steve Brusatte enchanted readers with his definitive history of the dinosaurs. Now, picking up the narrative in the ashes of the extinction event that doomed T-rex and its kind, Brusatte explores the remarkable story of the family of animals that inherited the Earth—mammals— and brilliantly reveals that their story is every bit as fascinating and complex as that of the dinosaurs.

Beginning with the earliest days of our lineage some 325 million years ago, Brusatte charts how mammals survived the asteroid that claimed the dinosaurs and made the world their own, becoming the astonishingly diverse range of animals that dominate today’s Earth. Brusatte also brings alive the lost worlds mammals inhabited through time, from ice ages to volcanic catastrophes. Entwined in this story is the detective work he and other scientists have done to piece together our understanding using fossil clues and cutting-edge technology.

A sterling example of scientific storytelling by one of our finest young researchers, The Rise and Reign of the Mammals illustrates how this incredible history laid the foundation for today’s world, for us, and our future.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.


Top reviews from the United States

Daniel Morgan
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding book about mammal evolution - learn about all the weirdos of the past!
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2024
I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did, yet I read it cover-to-cover in 24 hours!

The most phenomenal quality of this book is that the author doesn't start from where we are now and look backwards - that is, he doesn't just focus on the familiar present-day mammal lineages. Rather, nearly all of the book is tracing mammals (and Mammaliaforms) from their most distant synapsid origins in the Carboniferous up through the present.

The entire world recognizes what mammoths and saber-tooth cats are - we've LIVED with them. But what are those other weird-looking animals? The things that look like rhinos with weird antler-horns (Brontotheres). The things that look like camels but with trunks (Macrauchenia). Those rhino-elephant-giraffe mashups (Indricotheres). How about all the vaguely fuzzy stuff from the dinosaur days? These are the stars of this book.

Chapter 1 - Mammal Ancestors - focuses on the split of synapsids and diapsids. We start with pelycosaurs during the Late Carboniferous, and then move into the Permian world of therapsids (such as dicynodonts, dinocephalians, and gorgonopsians).

Chapter 2 - Making a Mammal - focuses on the end-Permian and the Triassic. We especially focus on the cynodonts and how they survived and diversified during the early Mesozoic.

Chapter 3 - Mammals and Dinosaurs - focuses especially on mammal jaw and teeth evolution, and how mammalian mouthparts are so unique. This sets us up for the next chapter.

Chapter 4 - The Mammalian Revolution - flips the script on Mesozoic mammals. Usually this is framed as dinosaurs ruled and kept mammals as small background figures. But the author makes the very convincing case that mammals flourished and diversified during the Cretaceous, but just at small sizes. There were seed-eaters, tree-gliders, fish-predators, a few baby-dino predators, insect-munchers, burrowers. This is when multituberlicates as well as therians emerge. This is also when mammals teeth became even more specialized to grind and shear at the same time. Just as dinosaurs were the reason there were no large mammals, mammals were the reason there were no small dinosaurs.

Chapter 5 - Dinosaurs Die, Mammals Survive - is of course about the K-T extinction. I appreciate that the author correctly points out that nobody REALLY won. Every clade on earth was negatively impacted by the extinction event, and mammals almost went extinct as well - thankfully, they happened to survive. He highlights certain factors that gave them SOME mammals better hand of cards such as small size, diverse food base, widespread, fast growth and reproduction. We also explore some topics such as monotremes and placentas.

Chapter 6 - Mammals Modernize - is about the flowering of more recognizable clades. This is especially about placental mammals. Afrotheria (which today are golden moles, tenrecs, hyraxes, elephants, hyraxes, aardvarks, manatees). Xenarthra (which today are sloths, armadillos, anteaters). Laurasiatherians (which today are carnivorans, bats, everything with a hoof plus whales, pangolins). And Euarchontoglires (which today are lagomporths, rodents, primates). The chapter mainly focuses on the Paleocene and very early Eocene, and aside from those placental clade also includes all sorts of cool oddities such as marsupials, South American ungulates, and brontotheres.

Chapter 7 - Extreme Animals - is basically about the Eocene diversification. Bats, rhinos, elephants, horses, whales, etc. Very neat!

Chapter 8 - Mammals and Climate Change - is about the transition from a hothouse Paleocene/Eocene world to a cooler, grassier Oligocene world. This also includes information about grass evolution as well as the hoofed ruminants, and various predators that also evolved to deal with the new climate.

Chapter 9 - Ice Age Animals - is about the Ice Age climate, how the Ice Ages continue to cycle between glacial and non-glacial periods, and about the fauna of the Ice Age (especially saber-tooth cats and mammoths, which did NOT really live together)

Chapter 10 - Human Animals - is about primates and human evolution.

I appreciate that most of this book is about extinct mammals - as in, the focus is not on relating this to contemporary animals or to human beings. Rather, we are learning about these diverse animals as they were and for their own sake.

I also appreciate the attention to phylogeny. The author explains how different groups diverged, he explains crown and stem groups, he explained some of the distinguishing features, and he often does compare and contrast.

The writing is absolutely solid - I read 400 pages in a day! He has a unique voice that allows him to communicate scientific thinking and terminology in a way that is comprehensible, convincing, and simply fun to read.

There is a phylogeny at the front, as well as a timeline and a few maps. I would have preferred more, but I didn't feel that this was lacking. The book is filled with illustrations and photos, and I think he included the perfect amount. The bibliography is fantastic because it is annotated - for each chapter, he spends pages and pages explaining what books and papers he used and how you as the reader may want to use it. (NOTE: Do not read Adrienne Mayor, who shows up twice. Her work is bunk).

This is a fantastic book. I learned a lot, the writing is great, and you will enjoy this even if you aren't typically a science reader.
SMS
5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastically readable history of mammals and their rise to domination
Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2023
I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes non-fiction about dinosaurs and their associated eras and times can be dense and wordy and difficult to get through for people who are just dipping their toes into the topic or who are newer. Happily The Rise and Reign of the Mammals does not have that problem. This well thought out and structured book takes us from the era of the dinos, when mammals were just beginning to get under the big reptiles’ feet to their eventual rise and dominance of the known world.
Rise and Reign begins primarily within the Pennsylvanian era with stem-mammals and moves to our more modern times. One of my favorite things about this book is that as we move from large period to large period Mr. Brusatte regales us with a short narrative about something might have or might happen in the future to set the scene for what we’re about to see or have explained in the next section. He doesn’t focus in on the creature themselves, instead looking at each one in relation to what made it different and unique that added to the overall growth of the mammalian line (or bush if you want a more accurate descriptor).
There are plenty of wonderful illustrations, charts, photos, and figures to keep things clear. I ended up taking a plethora of notes on the figures and charts as well as the text as they really helped me visualize what I was reading. Mr. Brusatte also keeps it fairly personal. Often referring to friends he has in the field or digs he’s gone on to tie into the bones and their discoveries. This made it seem more grounded than simple facts and added to the approachability of the book.
Overall, this was a fantastic addition to my collection of dino and dino-adjacent shelves and I’d highly recommend for any other lovers of the topic and era in question. It’s long, yes, but take it in chunks or one long holiday and you’ll enjoy the journey, I promise!
Daniel C Kinicki
4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive introduction but lacks detail and diagrams
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2022
This text integrates a very large subject, the entirety of mammalian evolution, in a single volume, using up to date research and sources. In composing a grand narrative it does an excellent job, but the scope of the topic clearly escapes the grasp of this book to handle on anything but a fairly superficial level. In particular, this book is almost entirely text, with only occasional pictures of fossil skeletons or artistic renditions of extinct animals. Critically there are no cladograms to outline relationships between the various groups and there are hardly any diagrams of the critical developments in dentition that characterize the mechanistic understanding of mammal evolution. The result is that many of the organisms and groups mentioned are no more than names.

Overall this book tells a very intriguing story regarding the evolution of mammals, but fails to teach the reader beyond a rather basic outline.

Best Sellers in

 
 

The Healing Magic of Forest Bathing: Finding Calm, Creativity, and Connection in the Natural World

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 111
11.81
 
 

DNA Is Not Destiny: The Remarkable, Completely Misunderstood Relationship Between You and Your Genes

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 30
22.57
 
 

Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets That Launched a Second Space Age

4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 379
29.66
 
 

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The Astonishing New Science of the Senses

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 19
13.78
 
 

For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 753
13.78
 
 

The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 217
17.72
 
 

Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 99
13.78
 
 

Math Without Numbers

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 362
11.81