I liked that little known animals were shown as belonging to the mammal group.  There are also well-known mammals.  I liked how where they lived was given along with what they ate.  Then facts were given that maybe I knew but mostly were new to me.  I appreciated when I was told when an animal was extinct in the wild but still alive due to protected areas/captivity.  While I am not happy about the captivity, I am glad the animal (I'll let you learn which one it is) is not totally extinct.  I learned a whole lot about these mammals and in a delightful way.  Perfect for your 4-8 year old.

TITLE:   After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals

 

AUTHOR:  Donald R. Prothero

 

DATE PUBLISHED:  2006

 

FORMAT:  Hardcover

 

ISBN-13:  9780253347336

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DESCRIPTION:

"Perhaps nudged over the evolutionary cliff by a giant boloid striking the earth, the incredible and fascinating group of animals called dinosaurs became extinct some 65 million years ago (except for their feathered descendants). In their place evolved an enormous variety of land creatures, especially the mammals, which in their way were every bit as remarkable as their Mesozoic cousins.

The Age of Mammals, the Cenozoic Era, has never had its Jurassic Park, but it was an amazing time in earth's history, populated by a wonderful assortment of bizarre animals. The rapid evolution of thousands of species of mammals brought forth gigantic hornless rhinos, sabertooth cats, mastodonts and mammoths, and many other creatures--including our own ancestors.

Their story is part of a larger story of a world emerging from the greenhouse conditions of the Mesozoic, warming up dramatically about 55 million years ago, and then cooling rapidly so that 33 million years ago the glacial ice returned. The earth's vegetation went through equally dramatic changes, from tropical jungles in Montana and forests at the poles, to grasslands and savannas across the entire world. Life in the sea also underwent striking evolution reflecting global climate change, including the emergence of such creatures as giant sharks, seals, sea lions, dolphins, and whales.

After the Dinosaurs is a book for everyone who has an abiding fascination with the remarkable life of the past."

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REVIEW:

 

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. 

 

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 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.  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.  But I did find the evolution of the horse, elephant and whale species rather interesting.  This book provides a nice overview of what was going on during the Age of Mammals.

 

 

 

 

 

I got this through the First to Read program.

Pierce seems to excel in telling the middle of stories. And his beginnings are pretty good. The ends, well, are left entirely off in some cases. Maybe there's something artistic to that. Some statement that life always continues on, that there is no end to our stories until death. But in a few of these stories it just felt lazy. I guess I felt that most strongly about the very first story in the collection, about a mini mammoth resurrected from the long ago, and returned to it in the subset of stories that confirmed that conclusion.

But there are several stories in here that I felt were really well done. The one I felt was most poignant was a story of a father and his son in an organization that was a parody of boy scouts, or some related organization. Both father and son are looking to belong to something, and it was a well-told, well-constructed story. I loved it.

Many of the stories are about fathers and sons of various stripes, making this collection more about family than it is about small mammals. The title story involves a man interacting with his girlfriend's son, an odd, uncomfortable relationship he's trying to work out (and ultimately fails). The theme of fathers and sons was, I felt, the strongest, and the work shone best when it centered on this theme. The first story that I disliked was about a mother and son, so really not that far from the theme, but the relationship part of the story was what worked best about the story. The details of the plot were what I objected to. But the family, in all of its complication, works.

In the end, I enjoyed this collection and the themes within it. It's a collection, so naturally I liked some stories better than others. It was uneven, but the best stories were really touching and thought-provoking, and I loved them.

Discover Mammals is a short, educational introduction to mammals for kids.

This isn't a very in-depth look at mammals, but the book's targeted to younger children, so it works.

It covers the basics of what makes a mammal (hair, births live young, produces milk), goes over the difference between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, and gives a brief comparison between mammals and the other kingdoms. It even mentions the exception to the live young rule, in platypuses and echidnas.

...and my auto-correct is trying to change "echidnas" to "enchiladas". I'm pretty sure enchiladas aren't mammals.

Although I am pretty sure they're herbivores, since they're usually shown with vegetables nearby.



[A pair of enchiladas, seen in their natural habitat.]

This review is for the whole series.

These books have been the backbone of my classification of animals unit for the last two years. They're structured beautifully, beginning with the taxonomy chart, and then showing the breakdown of the various orders within each class.

The rest of the book then takes a closer look at each of the orders and what makes them different from the other animals in that class.

Plus the pictures are lovely and frequently come with captions containing fun or interesting facts.

Delightful series.