I must confess feeling a bit unfair about giving this book bad press. First, as the other reviewers have mentioned, the illustrations are breathtaking (and yes, buy "The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives" as well). You don't have to be an evolution buff to enjoy Mauricio Antón's vivid drawings of monster pig entelodons, bizarrely pronged paleomerycids or huge-headed giant creodont predators. Another reviewer mentioned machairodonts; my personal favorites are the gorilla/horse-crossbreed-like chalicotheres.
Second, the task of covering 65 myr of mammalian succession in a reader-friendly way is just about impossible; after all, we are talking about hundreds of genera known only by their latin names (and most paleontologists are oddly adverse to giving cool names like "Tyrannosaurus", sometimes they rather go for stuff like "Brachydiceratherium", "Paracynohyaenodon" or even "Parachleuastochoerus"). The book succeeds in compiling all of this chaos, and it contains an immense, invaluable amount of information. It is all in all a unique and beautiful work on an extremely interesting topic and heartily recommmended on those grounds alone.
However: Despite its popular format the text is unforgiving in its demands on the reader. Clearly one has to have a fair comprehension of geological epochs, but also quite specialized bio-jargon like "sclerophyllous", "fossorial" or "selenodont". Maybe I'm the dummy here, but sometimes I've been quite puzzled as to who exactly the intended audience is. Are there really anybody out there who on one hand can visualize "bunodont" teeth, but on the other needs explanations of terms like "artiodactyl" or "felid"? Please guys, this could have been so infinitely much better if you'd just included:
- A glossary
- Maps (it's hard to visualize the rapidly changing European geography from descriptions alone)
- Phylogenetic trees (even if one would need non-European clades to fill in the gaps)
It would also be great to have:
- Time lines
- Illustrations of salient anatomical characteristics (like the difference between Creodonta and Carnivora)
So when I choose to cut down my rating to a meagre three stars, it's more a cry to the authors to create a second edition than to actually deter buyers. Buy this book. If you know the jargon, great; if not, read it with a dictionary and a notebook. Enjoy.
PS Top reviewer John Matlock "Gunny" has written almost 4000 reviews on all kinds of books, seemingly all of which are awarded five-star ratings. According to his profile he reviewed 6 other books the same day as MSaH. Just ignore commercial reviewers, folks.