Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution

For most of us, the story of mammal evolution starts after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, but over the last 20 years scientists have uncovered remarkable fossils and new technologies that have upended this story.

In Beasts Before Us, palaeontologist Elsa Panciroli charts the emergence of the mammal lineage, the Synapsida, beginning with their murky split from the reptiles in the Carboniferous period, more than three-hundred million years ago; these animals made the world thei...