User:Rusalkii/The Rise and Reign of the Mammals

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us is a 2022 book on the evolution of mammals by Steve Brusatte. The book received strongly positive reviews, with reviewers praising his storytelling and vivid writing.

Background
The author, Steve Brussatte, is a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. His first popular science book for adults, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, was published in 2018. Since then, he had shifted his research focus to mammals, wondering "what happened next" after the dinosaurs.

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals was published in 2022 by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Illustrations were provided by Todd Marshall and Brusatte's former PhD student Sarah Shelley, who was responsible for the diagrams.

Contents
Beginning with the split between the ancestors of mammals and reptiles in the Carboniferous era, the books traces the evolution of mammals chronologically to the present day.

Brusatte, however, gives humans “about the same attention as horses and whales and elephants. After all, we are but one of many amazing feats of mammalian evolution.” Focuses primarily on on-human primates [New Scientist], and homo sapiens is "presented as something of a calamity".