Customer Reviews

Evolving Eden: An Illustrated Guide to the Evolution of the African Large Mammal Fauna

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Africa, expecially as it appears to have been over time is probably the closest piece of land that might have been considered Eden.

For some 35 million years Africa has been the home of an ever widening number of animals. This beautifully illustrated work takes fossil finds, compares them with their closest living relatives and builds up what these animals probably looked like when they were alive.

The definition of animals in this book certainly includes humans and their African ancestors. More than just viewing the fossil remains, the built up people show a closer relationship to modern humans that just looking at the bare fossil.

In this book, Prof. Alan Turner and Mauricio Anton try to synthesize our understanding of Africa's natural history from the Miocene (approximately 35 million years ago) to the present. The book is unique in focusing on the entire continent as a source of mammalian evolution, rather than a particular species or ecosystem. It produces mixed results. Sometimes it becomes just a list of extant and extinct species. However, the last chapter synthesizes the story of African evolution quite well by showing the rise and fall of certain families of mammals.

What makes this book really useful though is the pictures of the extinct African mammals. A picture can be worth a thousand words, and Anton's pictures are certainly worth quite a bit. Each illustration starts with the underlying skeleton, then builds muscle and skin onto the fossil The final result gives the reader an idea of how prehistoric mammals differed from their modern counterparts. The drawings make it much easier to visualize the Miocene landscape. There are many color insets, but I only wish there were more.

While the book claims to be accessible to both lay and scientific readers, I suspect that it will be more useful to lay readers with some background in evolution or paleontology. Because of the book's broad scope, it cannot go into detail about the scientific method or interpreting fossils. Thus, lay readers might be puzzled when the authors start classifying mammals based on the number of toes or dental cusps they possess.

Ultimately, I think this book would be really helpful for anybody casually interested in paleontology who is going or has gone to Africa. I actually picked it up in preparation for a safari to Africa later this year. I found that understanding the evolution of everybody's favorite safari mammals really helps you appreciate them more, as well as appreciate the extinct animals you won't see out in the field.

This book threads the fine line between the Laymen and the professional. Just the right amount of info without getting stuck in specialization on any one beast.

Classic work with many quality illustrations and information. A must have for any paleontology library.

This books seems to negelect most informations about the molecular data. Also the the discussion about the natural history of extant and extinct species are a bit brief.