Customer Reviews

Mammoths, Sabertooths, and Hominids

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Mammoths, Sabertooths, and Hominids" describes the evolution of mammals in Europe over the past 65 million years, an immense stretch of time that this humble reader still struggles to comprehend. The author describes in detail the creatures that once lived in Europe, from the small and archaic, e.g. multituberculates, to the large and more modern, e.g. mammoths. Some mention is also made of non-mammals such as the killer birds and crocodiles. The book is lavishly illustrated with several full color plates in the center and numerous black-and-white sketches throughout the text. Mauricio Anton's pictures alone make the book worth owning for any prehistoric mammal enthusiast. The downside to this work, and why I only rate the book 4 stars, is that it's rather tough to read for someone who's not well-versed in the jargon of biology and paleontology. A glossary would have been really helpful. A hefty bibliography is supplied for those who wish to immerse themselves in the scholarly literature. I must admit that I had to start over a couple of times to grasp the material. This book isn't quite the readable account of mammalian evolution I was hoping for, having just recently been inspired to learn more about the subject by "Walking with Prehistoric Beasts". Students and grad-students in the field will certainly enjoy it, however.

I must confess feeling a bit unfair about giving this book bad press. First, as the other reviewers have mentioned, the illustrations are breathtaking (and yes, buy "The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives" as well). You don't have to be an evolution buff to enjoy Mauricio Antón's vivid drawings of monster pig entelodons, bizarrely pronged paleomerycids or huge-headed giant creodont predators. Another reviewer mentioned machairodonts; my personal favorites are the gorilla/horse-crossbreed-like chalicotheres.
Second, the task of covering 65 myr of mammalian succession in a reader-friendly way is just about impossible; after all, we are talking about hundreds of genera known only by their latin names (and most paleontologists are oddly adverse to giving cool names like "Tyrannosaurus", sometimes they rather go for stuff like "Brachydiceratherium", "Paracynohyaenodon" or even "Parachleuastochoerus"). The book succeeds in compiling all of this chaos, and it contains an immense, invaluable amount of information. It is all in all a unique and beautiful work on an extremely interesting topic and heartily recommmended on those grounds alone.

However: Despite its popular format the text is unforgiving in its demands on the reader. Clearly one has to have a fair comprehension of geological epochs, but also quite specialized bio-jargon like "sclerophyllous", "fossorial" or "selenodont". Maybe I'm the dummy here, but sometimes I've been quite puzzled as to who exactly the intended audience is. Are there really anybody out there who on one hand can visualize "bunodont" teeth, but on the other needs explanations of terms like "artiodactyl" or "felid"? Please guys, this could have been so infinitely much better if you'd just included:

- A glossary
- Maps (it's hard to visualize the rapidly changing European geography from descriptions alone)
- Phylogenetic trees (even if one would need non-European clades to fill in the gaps)

It would also be great to have:

- Time lines
- Illustrations of salient anatomical characteristics (like the difference between Creodonta and Carnivora)

So when I choose to cut down my rating to a meagre three stars, it's more a cry to the authors to create a second edition than to actually deter buyers. Buy this book. If you know the jargon, great; if not, read it with a dictionary and a notebook. Enjoy.


PS Top reviewer John Matlock "Gunny" has written almost 4000 reviews on all kinds of books, seemingly all of which are awarded five-star ratings. According to his profile he reviewed 6 other books the same day as MSaH. Just ignore commercial reviewers, folks.

This is a fantastic book. There is nothing else like it currently available. The best, most informative, guide to post-Cretaceous European mammals out there for the general reader. Beautiful pictures and detail-filled text will provide any lover of paleontology or indeed zoology with all the information they could possibly want. If you are student the book will also provide a valauble entree to 150 years of scholarship. Buy this while it is still available!

Written for the specialist or student in evolutionary biology and paleontology this book can nevertheless be studied by anyone who has an interest in these topics. For this reviewer, the main interest in this book was in the effect of climate on mammalian extinctions, with the hopes of shedding light on the current debate on climate change/global warming. Since the book is directed towards the specialist, the non-specialist will have to deal with a large amount of terminology, this arising mostly from the classification schemes used in paleontology and zoology. This reviewer found it helpful to use a few note sheets along the way to assist in remembering some of the scientific names of the major fauna that did exist in the time frame over which the book covers. Having some background in biology and geophysics will also help in the assimilation of the material in the book, particularly in cases where the authors are discussing dating techniques.

There is no part of this book that is uninteresting, and the excellent plates and drawings in the book add to the pleasure in its perusal. And the book went beyond this reviewer's expectations regarding the effects of climate change on mammalian extinctions: there are many examples discussed in the book and a few surprises, such as the assertion that the Mediterranean was completely desiccated around 6,000,000 years ago (the late Miocene). Early on though the authors caution the reader that even though much is known now regarding the time series of temperatures and oceanic changes throughout the last 65,000,000 years, one cannot conclude that there is an exact correlation between changes in climate and changes in mammalian ecosystems.

Very interesting also is how the authors deduce the dietary habits of extinct mammals by examining their fossilized teeth and jawbones. This "comparative" paleontology allows one to ascertain what flora were more prevalent in ages past by comparing the dental arrangements of modern mammals with those that are extinct. The variability in dental morphology it seems does have a direct correlation with the floral that were present during the time frame that the mammal was alive. An excellent example of this, which the authors discuss in the book, is the presence of `hypsodonty', which is dental morphology wherein the teeth have high crowns and enamel that extends beyond the gum line. The authors explain this as an adaptation to the silica grains that would be present in the grasses of the Pliocene age. Mammals without this adaptation would face extinction pressures due to the quick abrasion of the teeth due to these grains.

Another interesting discussion in the book concerns the `Monterey hypothesis', which is an attempt to understand the "climate crisis" in the middle Miocene in terms of the sequestering of large quantities of organic carbon. This resulted in accelerated global cooling because of the drawdown of atmospheric CO2 and the end of certain warm-water circulations. The authors discuss the experimental evidence for this hypothesis.

Mammalian extinctions can therefore be caused by climate change as well as genetics. The authors however point to another cause of these extinctions, namely the rise of the homo sapiens species, which the authors characterize as being "unique" in "its ability to exterminate other species." They give evidence to support this, but also note that that modern humans also fall prey to the very mammals that benefit from human expansion, such as the rats in the Middle Ages. But as they also note, H. sapiens is a wandering species. They moved into Australia as well as North America, and of course now dominate the planet. But this species, which on rare occasions decimates its own, is insatiably curious and has shown absolute brilliance throughout its sojourn on Earth...and on other worlds where it is just getting started.

Mammoths, Sabertooths, And Hominids: 65 Million Years Of Mammalian Evolution In Europe by Jordi Agusti (Director of the Institut de Paleontologia M. Crusafont, Sabadell, Barcelona, Spain) and Madrid based, scientific illustrator and artist Maurico Anton, is an astounding, informative, superbly presented tour through the 65 million years of mammalian evolution time-lined from the wake of the dinosaurs' extinction to the rise of modern Homo Sapiens. Mammoths, Sabertooths, And Hominids is an intimate, authoritative, scholarly study of the evolution of mammals, deftly illustrated in black and white with a color insert section that showcases breathtaking art of prehistoric wildlife, Mammoths, Sabertooths, And Hominids is a fascinating, enjoyable, accessible, and strongly recommended as a core title for Paleontology Studies reading lists and academic reference collections.

Mammoths, Sabertooths, And Hominids features interesting small and large mammals of prehistoric Europe along with warming-cooling temperatures, falling-rising sea levels, changing plant life, and spreading-receding ice sheets for the Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene Epochs. Figure 4.8 on page 104 features drawings of the giant creodont Hyainailouros sulzeri and the giant amphicyonid Amphicyon giganteus standing next to the modern gray wolf Canis lupus, which is the largest existing carnivore having a combination of meat-slicing and bone-cracking teeth like those of the two giants. Figure 4.14 on page 120 shows the life appearance of the early ursid Hemicyon sansaniensis, which looks like a dog. Figure 4.21 on page 136 features drawings of the skeleton and the life appearance of the amphicyonid Amphicyon major, which has a doglike skull, catlike body, and bearlike feet. Figure 5.25 on page 203 shows the five-horned head of Hoplitomeryx matthei. On page 258, the book describes Homo antecessor as the ancestor of both Homo heidelbergensis and modern humans, concluding that Homo erectus represented a separate evolutionary branch that had no living descendants.

... through 65 million years of "punctuated" mammalian evolution, based on the vast fossil record of greater Europe. If you don't have something of a fresh background in archaeological zoology, if concepts like "clades" and "radiations" are unfamiliar, if you've never been able to keep the Eocene separate from the "epicene", you'll never get past the first 5 million years. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of words used freely in this book that are not part of our everyday vocabulary; on ONE random page, (56), I find: microchoerid, adapid, dimorphism, creodont, hypercarnivorous, sectorial, cursorial, digitigrade, miacid, canid, ursid, amphicyonid, paleothere, lophiodontid, and brachydont. And that doesn't include the italicized Genus/species names! Now many readers will be able to handle these terms, based on recognition of their Latin/Greek roots, but the onslaught of specialized vocabulary continues for 281 large pages. If you think I'm trying to scare you, you're right. I don't want you to waste your money.

Nevertheless, this is a profoundly interesting and significant study of evolution within a delimited geography, revealing better than anything else I've read the random and contingent relationship between Darwin's "descent with modification" and the "catastrophic" events of the environment. By observing the waves of equilibrium and extinction/replacement in relation to changes in sea level, opening/closing of land-bridges due to continental drift, and huge shifts of climate, one can understand "evolution" over vast epochs of time far more credibly. The latter subject - climate change - makes this book more pertinent at present than mere intellectual curiosity. Climate change has been real. It has resulted in massive extinctions... and massive evolution of new forms, "endless forms most beautiful." By studying the climate changes of the past, we do have some chance of predicting the impact of the rapid climate change now occurring (with or without the uninformed consent of the McPalin crowd) and hedging our bets about our own chances as a species. I'm delighted, personally, by the realization that global warming will stimulate the evolution of wonderful new species, even new genera, within a few thousand years, but I'm unlikely to be around to see them.

The difficulty of the text is partly relieved by excellent illustrations, including very clear drawings of key fossils and plausible re-imagining of the mammals they came from. In pictures and in words, you'll encounter a parade of preposterous critters - far more and far stranger than Noah's Ark could possibly have carried - all of which thrived and multiplied in some niche in the ever-changing environment of Europe. Among them, by the way, were monkeys, baboons, hominids, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor, Homo neanderthalis, and Homo sapiens -- all supplanted, alas, by Homo not-so-sapiens-after-all.

This text is the best guide to Mammoths, Sabertooths and hominds. It provides in-depth information on any species that lived in Europe from the Eocene epoch to the Pleistocene. It also covers mammals from other contients that affected the Europeon fauna. For example, from Africa came the Gomphotheres, Dinotheres and Hominoid (and many more). I enjoyed the part of the book that covers the extinct Big Cats, especially Machairodus giganteus (My favourite of all). For those who want to buy this book should also try reading The Big Cats and their fossil relatives...another excellent book.

This is a fairly short, one volume introduction to sixty-five million years of life in Europe. Most of the interest, most of the books on evolutionary history seem to concentrate on the era of the dinosaurs. But when the comet hit, they were gone. Mammals took over the econogical niche previously held by the dinosaurs.

We seem to feel that the mammals jumped full blown into what we see today. This book details the history of how the mammals came to take over the top of the pyramid. At the beginning there was only the small almost rodent like mammals that had existed alongside the dinosaurs. The book begins here, but points out that there is relatively little record from that time. The mammals were small and difficult to find in fossil form. From here the book goes on to the evolution of humans during only the last couple of million years.

Well written and easy to read, the book covers a little known era. You will find though, an awful lot of new (and big) words to describe the various animals.