An informative introductory book on the Age of Mammals meant for the interested lay-person or non-geologist/paleontologist. The book covers the end of the Age of Dinosaurs and the Age of Mammals until our current century. The author covers the changing climate, geography, flora and faunal species of each epoch (Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene) in separate chapters, accompanied by sketches, graphs, illustrations and a colour plate section. The brief section dealing with ancient hominins is a bit outdated (the book was published in 2006) and does not take into account new archaeological or genetic discoveries. However, this section is incredibly short, so not too important in this book. This book provides a good introduction to the Cenozoic Era, but does not deal with any particular topic in any particular depth. There is however, a list of further reading recommendations at the end of each chapter and a decent reference section. The author also tends to provide "lists" of species with obscure names in run-on sentences. This would have been ok if he was listing tigers, lions, elephants, crocodiles and hippos; instead we have "perissodactyls, artiodactyls, elephants, whales, uintatheres, tillodonts, arctostylopids, pantodonts, rodents, rabbits, hyaenodont creodonts, and advanced primates, or anthropoids" - which is rather disconcerting even with sketches of some of these creatures provided. Still, this book provides a nice overview of what was going on during the Age of Mammals. ( )

If I could give a book a rating of 3.75, that would be about right. As others have noted this is so much of a survey that it becomes less a history of the evolution of mammals and more of an examination of climate change during the wide period in question. Not that there is anything wrong with this, but it's not really what I was looking for. If anything sticks out for me it's another book indicating that giant rocks from space are overrated as a cause of extinction so far as contemporary science is concerned; at least as compared to general climate change wrought by the processes of plate tectonics and mass outbreaks of volcanism. Also, I'll cheerfully admit that Prothero uses enough technical language that while it didn't totally go over my head, it is very much not a book you could give to, say, your general reader and expect them to get much out it. ( )

http://www.skyseastone.net/jvstin/unjvst/006538.html ( )