""The evolution of mammals is one of the most amazing and well-documented examples in the fossil record, but it has been long overshadowed by the popularity of dinosaurs. Yet we know that stories about saber-toothed cats and giant mammoths and ground sloths often get a lot of attention, and they are not even the most amazing and peculiar mammals that ever lived. Like the previous books in Protheros 25 series, each chapter will focus on an individual fossil or group of fossils and the story it tells. The science will be framed in terms of the dramatic stories of the people who made the discoveries, and the importance of the discovery in the context of the science. Each chapter will focus on some fascinating tidbit about mammalian evolution, each of which illustrates a simple point, such as "How did horses REALLY evolve?" or, "What were the biggest land mammals that ever lived?" or, "How did whales evolve from land mammals?" Typically, Prothero will take the discovery of a particular genus of mammal as the main theme, and weave in the biographical details of the important paleontologists who worked on these animals as well. Prothero aims to capture the "cool" factor with each bizarre or interesting anecdote that illustrates some of the examples of how different kinds of mammals evolved, from horses to rhinos to camels to elephants to the great whales-and the surprising and amazing things we have learned about them, especially in the past 30 years as their fossil record became much better known and new evidence emerged from fields like molecular biology.""-- Provided by publisher.