Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal Evolution

Description

I think the biggest disappointment I had with this book was the lack of pictures. Sure, partly my fault because I didn't notice that there were only 18 black and white illustrations, but when a book uses two very famous murals as a starting point and then doesn't have 1 color picture of the murals, I am disappointed. The pictures from the Age of Mammals were muddy at best. The writing was average. Wallace is no stylist but he is a solid writer conveying technical information. I picked up this book after I read an article on Buffon in Natural History so I was surprised at how Wallace treated him. Now I need to know more about Buffon to see which representation is more accurate. The book is a couple of years old but the only thing I noticed was the comment that mammals were small and rat-like during the Age of Reptiles. Within the past 2 years there have been several large mammal species discovered which co-existed with the dinosaurs. Although not megafauna, they were over three feet in length and preyed on dinosaurs.