A few hundred thousand years after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, a tiny individual primate called Purgatorius died in the Purgatory Hill badlands of Montana. Its tiny fossilized teeth led scientists to conclude that it was the species that broke away from its insect-eating cousins and was the first primate. Much, much earlier, in the Carboniferous period of Paleozoic Era, about 330 million years ago, the first synapsids split apart from their reptilian contemporaries and started the lineage that led to mammals.

These are two salient points in Dr. Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Reign of the Mammals. Brusatte, PhD, is an American Paleontologist who teaches at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The book’s notes identify him as the author of the international bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. The paleontology advisor on the Jurassic World film franchise, Brusatte has named more than fifteen new species, including the tyrannosaur “Pinocchio rex” (Qianzhousaurus), the raptor Zhenyuanlong, and several ancient mammals.

This is a book by a scientist for the general public. It’s conversational, not overloaded with jargon, and personal: he declaims his own take on the state of the science, and peppers his insights with idiosyncratic anecdotes about the principal intrepid scientists whose preceded his own. His reverence for these pioneering specialists — his heroines and heroes — never flags.

If you have an interest in the evolution of mammals, I can’t imagine there is a better book or a better author with whom to start.

https://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-rise-and-reign-of-mammals-by-ste... ( )

Just as good as Brusatte's first book. I'm glad he took an interest in mammals so I could enjoy more of his writing without having to hear about dinosaurs again. Highly recommended. ( )

I loved the Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, and this was just as good. Brusatte knows how to map out a good book about a complex and vast topic so that you never get lost in the weeds. We watch how some mammal characteristics were inherited from reptiles, how the first mammals lived among the dinosaurs, and how they slowly outpaced and survived the dinosaurs through mass extinction events. Fascinating animals are covered here, and honestly, any book that brings up the giant ground sloth is a winner. That thing was nuts. ( )

I listened to this as an audiobook and really enjoyed it. I found it started a bit slow - I don't much care about ancient lizards and other pre-mammals - but then became enthralling. A really quite detailed discussion of teeth should have been tedious, but instead it was fascinating. This was the moment when I could see the "mammalness" of mammals first emerging. From then on, the book offered a well thought-through characterisation of mammals and what has made them successful as a group. Note that by well thought-through I mean that Brusatte has done a good job of identifying which elements will be pertinent and interesting to a lay reader; I'm not congratulating him on the quality of his science, which I am not an expert in.

The writing is fun and light, but also very clear. It's a shame I don't care about dinosaurs, because I'm sure his other book is also well-written.

Also, I've never been able to do this before:
Carboniferous-Permian-Triassic-Jurassic-Cretaceous-Paleogene (Paleocene-Eocene-Oligocene)-Neogene(Miocene-Pliocene)-Quaternary(Pleistocene-Holocene) ( )

This turned out to be a rather more introductory and popular work than I was expecting, but taken for what it is, it's quite good. It deals with mammals' Palaeozoic forebears, the early mammals living alongside the dinosaurs, and the Cenozoic "reign" of mammals, where they all but monopolize large land animal niches.

Speaking of size-based niches, a point Brusatte makes is that while the dinosaurs kept Mesozoic mammals small, mammals equally kept dinosaurs large - dinosaurs could only invade the small endotherm realm by becoming birds, literally keeping out of reach of the mammals.

I'd preferred if Brusatte had kept his politics out of the book, but that's a minor complaint.

The "further reading" section is dangerous.