The catastrophe that allowed mammals to reign supreme

Humans are so comfortable with their self-declared dominance over the rest of life, appointing themselves titular head of an entire geological age in the ‘Anthropocene’, that we forget how we are party to a much wider evolutionary alliance: the mammals.

Steve Brusatte announces that mammals reign supreme upon this planet. One thinks especially of their place as climax predators in almost all regions – the lions, tigers, wolves and bears for example – or the sheer weight of numbers of the megafauna in the African savanna, the herds of wildebeest, antelopes and zebras. Mammals are more widely spread over the planetary surface than all higher organisms, with the possible exception of birds. While birds may reign supreme in the air, there are more than 1,000 species of bats, and birds have never penetrated to the ocean floor, as have several kinds of whale which, on a single lungful of air, can hunt at the most crushing depths.

In this detailed, deeply researched and entertaining book the author summarises why and how mammals have managed to hold sway for so much of the past 65 million years.