Beasts Before Us

The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution

By: Elsa Panciroli

Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart

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 new fossils and used new technologies that have upended this story.

In Beasts Before Us, paleontologist Elsa Panciroli charts the emergence of the mammal lineage, Synapsida, beginning at their murky split from the reptiles in the Carboniferous period, over 300 million years ago. They made the world theirs long before the rise of dinosaurs.

Elsa crisscrosses the globe to explore the sites where discoveries are being made and meet the people who make them. In Scotland, she traverses the desert dunes of prehistoric Moray, where quarry workers unearthed the footprints of Permian creatures from before the time of dinosaurs. In South Africa, she introduces us to animals that gave scientists the first hints that our furry kin evolved from a lineage of egg-laying burrowers. In China, new, complete fossilized skeletons reveal mammals that were gliders, shovel-pawed Jurassic moles, and flat-tailed swimmers.

This book radically reframes the narrative of our mammalian ancestors and provides a counterpoint to the stereotypes of mighty dinosaur overlords and cowering little mammals. It turns out the earliest mammals weren't just precursors, they were pioneers.

©2021 Elsa Panciroli (P)2021 Tantor

Love this book!

incisive, informative, passionate and sometimes humorous. The reader’s Scottish accent fits since the author is Scottish. So much I didn’t know. Mammals started as early as the reptiles started. So interesting.

Absolutely made me cry

I always love learning something new for the first time and this wonderful book gave me a wealth of knowledge on early mammal history. Epilogue made me weep whilst sharing the story with my partner.

Bitter Misandry Historical Fiction

Half the book is spent talking about the archeologists she hates. Would've been 5 stars if she just stuck to the evolutionary tale.

Enjoyable and concise analysis of early mammalian history

This book is great. I really enjoyed Panciroli’s writing style and her lightly sardonic sense of humor made me laugh out loud a couple times. Foremost, her book focus on on how the permian through Jurassic evolution of mammals created the blueprints for traits we see today. In this, her expertise shines. The narrative is both informative and fascinating.
Additionally, her feminist perspective is refreshing and much needed. More importantly, it’s not particularly intrusive in the flow of the book. She simply places women in their well deserved places in paleontological history and highlights their importance. You can ignore the reviews who dwell on “misandry” and and such.

A writer of wit

This book is packed full of science, wise cracks and wit. It is an easy listening because the author’s character comes through the book but does not overwhelm it. She covers so many different areas to bring us the epic history of mammals on earth. What an incredible mind and view of the world! I would dig fossils with her any day. Thank you.

better with illustrations

I found this book interesting with many insights into mammalian evolution that have been overlooked in the past. I have a better idea of the extent of mammalian development. however, I am sure that I would have gotten more out of the book if I had had a hard copy that I could be looking at illustrations and examples.

A delightful adventure with our weird, wild ancestors

I love this book’s humor and wit. I noticed other reviewers pointed out “leftist” and “woke” ideology. Were that the case, I might have been put off, as this is a science book and not a political one. All she spouts are facts. Delicious facts mixed with truly interesting stories. Our synapsid ancestors are totally weird, yet fascinating. I wonder whether we’d have evolved if the P-T mass extinction never happened. Maybe we would be just the same but in Moschops bodies. Get this book. It’s awesome.

Detailed discovery

Well written and read giving a detailed history of the evolution of mammals and other creatures. Loved it.

A Top Tier Science Popularizing Book and Writer

And a cutting-edge book, since, as revealed by the book, most of the information on the history of mammals is outdated, and it may take years to correct, it is so ingrained.

Though the book not as broad as A Short History of Nearly Everything (but broad nevertheless), it is at the same stratospheric level in terms of a writer/narrator fit. The narrator gets off to a slow start, but don't let that fool you, because when she gets going, she really gets going, and the writer feeds her many entertaining idioms and perspectives that only the delightfully exasperated Scottish accent can give us, and, as a bonus, we get rare female-generated analogies ('dry as a biscuit'), and, as a further bonus, the writer could not resist going novel on us from time to time (usually a bad thing), taking us on a tour through scenes as if it were a suspense/adventure novel, risky, but she did an enjoyable job of it (while no doubt satisfying some of her novel-writing aspirations).

Scientifically, the book will straighten you out on the deep lineage of mammals (case in point: where they and reptiles split from the same tetrapod origin, meaning reptiles are not in the mammal lineage (like monkeys and humans are not) as most people would surmise, given the outdated information on the Internet), which most of us have misconstrued and have a weak grasp on. The chapter 'Jurassic Mammals' being a case in point - where were they in the Jurassic Park films? Most Likely Answer: the filmmakers had no idea that mammals existed way back then beyond little shrew-like creatures, thereby misleading the public (and a very large one at that) (but then they were misled themselves with the erroneous conclusions of the time).

Conclusion: This book will bring you up to date, and get you beyond the outdated information still being presented (even by Wikipedia, and even in Britannica) on the Internet, which must be very frustrating for those working on the frontiers of science...

Fascinating evolutionary history

This details, amplifies and corrects the origins of mammals and their divergence from other species