Fascinating read! I was taught mammals were rodent sized and had somehow survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.! This is a much better explanation, and a much more interesting one. Kudos Elsa Paniroli! anyone interested in this subject will enjoy this book.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I found the subject matter very interesting and the book well written and easy to read you can tell the author did their research. highly recommend this book.

Thank you Netgalley for letting me read and review this book. I enjoy nonfiction books, especially when it is about nature and animals. Overall I liked this book. I do think it could have been edited some more. I didn't like the jokes and some of the information seemed unnecessary.

'Beasts Before Us' is an excellent introduction to the paleontology, biology and development of mammals and their ancestors, way back to the first synapsid in the Carboniferous. Panciroli tells us about the history of our interpretation and understanding of these fossils, and presents the latest insights, as well. And she writes thus that no previous knowledge of geology, paleontology or biology is required. There are not many illustrations, but there's a section of color plates halfway the book, and every chapter is introduced with a charming page-filling pen illustration by April Neander."

What an amazing look at some of the most interesting aspects of evolutionary biology. This read wasn't boring at all, not too technical and very approachable. I had a wonderful time with this read.

Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution
by Elsa Panciroli
⚡️ I was provided an e-ARC by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
🌟: 4 / 5
📚: Long before the mammoths and sabertooth tigers of the ice age, even more prehistoric mammals roamed the earth, pioneering traits that would one day make us, us.
💭: I think that a lot of folks who know me can tell you that, as much as I love dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals are what I really freak out over when I see them in museums. Panciroli brings all of the things that I love most about loving prehistory as an adult, namely a sense of humor and a compelling narrative that brings these animals to life, to the table in her fully immersive and creative nonfiction.

Not only is Beasts Before Us beautifully typeset (watch the deep nerd come out in this review, am I right?), but it is beautifully illustrated and full of imagery that makes this book stand out amongst a genre that can get pretty dry. And not only is it scientifically accurate, but it’s genuinely hilarious. Panciroli keeps a running commentary filled with jokes, personal reflections, puns, and fun facts in the footnotes (something that the audiobook lacks and makes reading a physical or e-book copy worth it). I snorted multiple times at lines such as “they are nature going digital: the first fingers and toes” and “this animal [Moschops] was a serious ‘chonky boi.’”

Something else that makes Beasts Before Us stand out is that, in a sea of paleo books mainly written by men, Panciroli uses her book as an opportunity to discuss the shortcomings of paleo history and the bias that the views of the (mostly) men who led the field had on how we understand prehistory. By highlighting oft-forgotten indigenous knowledge, pioneering work by women in the field, and the grassroots efforts to advance science, Panciroli almost effortlessly weaves a narrative that allows readers to see themselves in the story of prehistory.

Let’s face it. When it comes to discussion and portrayal of ancient/extinct life in modern culture, dinosaurs rule. They rumble, lumber, sprint, pounce, trumpet, and roar across our screens and pages, across bedspreads and pajamas. Their names trip merrily across the tongues of children as they reel off Latinate terminology and eras like an auctioneer at a livestock sale. The “Rex” in T-rex may as well refer to the King of the Lizard’s place in our collective minds as much to its role as an apex predator of its time.

Pity then the poor early mammals, who can’t help but be overshadowed (literally and figuratively) by their massive cousins. Well, no more. Paleontologist Elsa Panciroli speaks for the mammals! And luckily for us, she does so in fantastic fashion. In sharp, concise, vivid prose, she’s here to tell us to forget everything we think we know about early mammals, because it’s probably wrong. No, they didn’t evolve from reptile, or even mammal-like reptiles (a phrase she loathes and hopes to drive into oblivion). No, they didn’t simply cower as the dinos were active (some early mammals actually preyed on dinosaurs). No, they didn’t only become players when the dinosaurs all disappeared. It all makes for a fascinating and eye-opening read, and though I don’t think Panciroli is going to help early mammals dethrone dinosaurs from their lofty perch, I do think she gets them into the room. Where they should have been all along.

As one would expect, the book is mostly structured chronologically, in linear fashion. But, and Panciroli is smart to not only note this point but repeat it throughout, evolution itself is not linear, it is not “progress” from A to B to C. Nor, she is equally at pains to emphasize, does it have a purpose of “improvement.” She is well aware of the lure of that view — “it is, of course, easy to slip into language that suggests evolution had a goal” — but strongly dispels the mirage — “There is no end-goal to evolution’s journey. It is random, the route is based on happenstance.”

With that admonition front and center, Panciroli begins way back with the first colonization of land, well before dinosaurs or mammals, then moves through until “we hit the mammal highway around 300 million years ago.” It’s here that Panciroli’s enthusiasm really begins to shine as she details the many early innovations, such as sabre teeth and arboreal adaptation. Unfortunately, “the beasts that flourished in the first age of mammals “were … swept away in a mass extinction event so brutal that life on Earth came closer to annihilation than ever before or since” (estimates of 85% of all life).

From the Permian we shift to the Mesozoic (made up of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods), when reptiles, and especially dinosaurs, became dominant. Mammals, meanwhile, got small, with none in the Late Triassic weighing more than a few hundred grams. They also became nocturnal (a shift still seen in the makeup of our eyes) even as jawbones shifted, and the mammalian ear formed (those two linked). By the middle Jurassic, counter to what earlier paleontologists had thought, mammals were flourishing, radiating outward, and adapting to all sorts of niches, especially with the rise of flowering plants in the Cretaceous. But then an indifferent universe intervened again, this time via the Chicxulub impact. According to earlier scientists, the extinction of the dinosaurs is what “freed” the mammals to finally come into their own, but one of the more fascinating insights of Beasts Before Us is Panciroli’s theory (well-supported) that in fact “it was probably not the dinosaurs who kept our ancestors in check, but their mammal brothers and sisters.”

After this it’s a relatively quick hop, skip, and jump over the next few million years, with Panciroli stopping before the rise of hominids, or as she puts it, “our journey ends where most other mammal origin stories only just begin.” She does, however, note our impact on current life (the Sixth Great Extinction) as well as on the monotone nature of that life, pointing out that “Around 60 per cent of all mammals alive today are kept by humans for food.” Throw in ourselves and our pets, and “wild mammals represent only 4 per cent of all mammals alive today.”

Panciroli covers a plethora of species and details a host of anatomical difference and changes—bone structure, herbivore stomachs, ectothermic metabolism, etc. To be honest, the scientific names can get overwhelming and hard to remember, but outside of that inconsequential bit, the text is always crystal clear as it lays out evolutionary changes and what problems they solved. The lucid prose is aided with a number of illustrations so readers can better visualize what is being described. Panciroli also has a deft hand with metaphors/analogies, which are often richly vivid, sometimes humorous, never overly complicated, and always clarifying. In describing the Mesozoic reptiles taking advantage of the newly-emptied world, she writes that “like teenagers leaving home for the first time, they stated to experiment.” Later she portrays survivors of an extinction event “striding out of the flames like unkillable-Terminators.” And before then, she says of the early nocturnal mammals with their newly powerful bite and bigger brains, “These tiny ancestors were living microchips. They were night vision goggles. They were fuzzy little ninjas.”

Along with the hard science and detailed anatomy, Panciroli intersperses her own experiences at various sites around the world, digging in Scotland for instance, or using high-tech machines in France to get unprecedented looks at bones. She also highlights two major issues in not just paleontology but all science nowadays. One is the imperialistic roots of so much science, which was also intertwined with racism and misogyny. It’s “language of conquest” she argues, “still permeates how we talk about evolution … How tedious it is always talking about the rise and fall of life as though it were a series of oppressive empires.” She rightfully argues for the “decolonization” of science, the repatriation of fossils, the current day diversification of the academic disciplines (in terms of race, gender, international regions), and the long-overdue recognition of contributions from women and indigenous people. She herself spends a good portion of the book highlighting the exploits and achievements of Zofia Kielan-Jaworoswka, who “transformed Mesozoic mammal research [and yet] remains one of the many under-acknowledged women of scientific history.”

Beasts Before Us is not only an excellent example of popular science — lucid, vivid, colorful, engaging, informative, personal — but it’s also that rare non-fiction book that opens up a whole new world, one not already explored by a number of other authors. I don’t love my dinosaurs any less, or my megafauna late mammals like Smilodon or the giant sloth, but I think I do need to nudge my models (yes, I have models) aside to make room on my shelf for some of the fascinating creatures Panciroli introduces here. Maybe one of those “fuzzy ninjas . . . “

Lively written book about paleontology and history of science. Interesting facts and stories of greatest discoveries are blended with a memoir of a life of fieldwork and research. Recommended for anyone who wants to know more about our evolution. In places it reminded me of books by my beloved Richard Fortey.

Thanks to the publisher, Bloomsbury USA,, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review a free copy of this book prior to publication in exchange for an honest review.

This book would be a good pairing with "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" by Stephen Brusatte. Although it was not quite as easy to read as Brusatte's book, it covered much the same time period and in a similar fashion except that it was from the viewpoint of the mammals rather than the dinosaurs.

Having read a pre-production text, I had some difficulty following the story due to typos, lack of ability to switch between of reference pages and text, inability to use the footnote and reference numbers as active links, and the lack of some of the appendices. I hope that the final production copy will flow more easily. It would make the text easier to follow if there were family trees of all of the pre-mammalian and mammalian evolutionary branches of the animals that are discussed in the text. This would greatly add to the ability of a non-paleontologist to place each of the featured mammals in context to each other and to geologic time.

I would rate this as a very good popular science book and would recommend it to anyone interested in anthropology.

Delightfully written with a heartwarming vein of humor, BEASTS BEFORE US presents a new, more accurate view of mammalian evolution, lifting mammals from the rather wimpy and shameful status of dinosaur prey to which they had long been relegated. Author /paleontologist Elsa Panciroli leavens the scientific narrative with anecdotes from the long history of paleontology, and intersperses personal accounts and events, so that readers feel a kinship and presence.

An entertaining, informative and educational read. Highly recommended for anyone who has an interest in palaeontology.