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The catastrophe that allowed mammals to reign supreme

4 June 2022

9:00 AM

4 June 2022

9:00 AM

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

Picador, pp.512, 20

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.

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