Calling all paleophiles

✍ Scribed by Alan Shoemaker

• Book ID: 101269067
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 11 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0733-3188
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-2361(1999)18:5<449::aid-zoo10>3.0.co;2-g

✦ Synopsis

Only occasionally does a paleomammal book come along that so radically combines, synthesizes, and places within a single cover so much information. For those zoos and their staff interested in mammals and the North American "origins of their species," this new volume is just such a piece. The only significant fault I can find is the price. Any time a publisher forces professionals to pay more than $l00 for any book, not to mention $200, is shameful. Even the pre-publication price of $208 was high and that offer has expired.

Having said that, I want to laud the individual authors for combining in a very readable fashion a plethora of names that, like those of extant species, have needed "lumping" for decades. The first three chapters neatly set the stage for an order-byorder taxonomic review by providing both professional and avocational readers alike with the current thinking about changes in North American topography, climate, and paleoenvironments. With the vast improvements in dating technology and stratigraphic analysis, our understanding of the true lengths of Cenozoic epochs-Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, etc.-has changed by several millions of years since many readers took geology. In a similar manner, our understanding of mammalian evolution has also metamorphosed since most readers graduated from high school. To get the book going, Prothero in Chapter 1 discusses the biostratigraphy, paleoclimate, and paleogeography of each epoch, one by one, until the end of the Pliocene. This series does not discuss the Pleistocene, either environmentally or faunistically, as this most recent epoch has already been reviewed by Kurten and Anderson [1980] and needs little further attention. A new Pleistocene volume by Anderson is in development.

Chapter 2 delves into tertiary vegetation as a context for mammalian evolution. Although it should be obvious that the distribution of extant species is dependent on floral patterns, most readers do not fully recognize that modern plants, and the animals that feed on them, have altered geographic ranges over time in accordance with environmental parameters. Even more remarkable are the changes we have observed over the past 30 million years since grasses evolved. Regardless, for many genera and families, it was actually the Miocene some 23-5.25 million years ago when vegetation was at its forested best, the mosaic of parklands and mixed forests pro-