Prothero's Princeton Guide to Prehistoric Mammals - Jan 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Therefore, I look around for means to escape this, and what do I come across but Donald R. Prothero’s ‘Princeton Guide to Prehistoric Mammals’. Yay?

Mmm, no. As we have discussed back in 2019, I am not the biggest fan of Mr. Prothero these days, and the ‘PGPM’ did not really challenge this opinion, though not for the reasons you think. You see, ‘TPGPM’ is not exactly a field guide; it is more of a reboot, done in a manner not unlike what happened to the SW franchise after it merged with Disney!

…What is the punchline, you may ask? Good question and the answer is located right in the very first chapter of ‘TPGPM’, the ‘How Do We Classify Animals?’ subchapter. It promptly and directly tells the book’s readers, (aka us), that the old classification model of, well, classifying the animal kingdom, (plants and fungi are left beyond the brackets of this book & discussion), is outdated and is going to be rebooted, even if the lay public is not aware of that yet. Moreover, ‘TPGPM’ is an attempt to introduce the lay public to this reboot, one faction of animal kingdom at a time, in this case – it is prehistoric mammals…as well as their modern descendants and/or relatives. The end result is… a picture book for adults, illustrations in ‘TPGPM’ overwhelm the text, though yes, let’s be honest – the chapters are very heterogeneous, and uneven, which is quite reasonable, because the internal factions of the mammal ‘kingdom’ aren’t really equal to each other either. That said, Mr. Prothero may’ve called this book of his a ‘guide’, but it feels more like an encyclopedia, a book that tried to encompass everything that’s mammal-related… and this brings us to another book on prehistoric mammals – Mauricio Anton’s ‘Sabertooth’, which is an encyclopedia on prehistoric mammals and mammal-like reptiles that utilized sabre-teeth as a hunting weapon (& technique). The book approaches this topic from all sorts of angles, but the titular topic is always constant and remains unchanged. Fair enough, since the prehistoric sabre-toothed hunters were a mixed bunch: there were the mammal-like reptiles of the Paleozoic, several creodont species, (more on them down below, maybe), the marsupial Thylacosmilus (and maybe its’ relatives), and the nimravids, the barbourofelids and the true cats slash felids – six major animal groups in total. And?

And nothing, ‘Sabertooth’ is an informative and entertaining book that features not just text, but also illustrations and graphs – Just as ‘TPGPM’ does, though it isn’t mentioned in the list of ‘Further Reading’ in ‘TPGPM’, (though several other books written by Anton and Turner are). Fair enough, though did I mention that I do not like Mr. Prothero lately? Just checking! What next?

‘TPGPM’ seems to follow the approach of ‘Sabertooth’, but because its’ subject is so much broader, the result is a mess. The first chapter is an intro to the book, really; the second cover the mammal-like reptiles, proto-mammals, or stem mammals of Paleozoic, but mostly – the mammals of the Mesozoic; the third – the marsupials of Australia and South America, existing and extinct, (though given the monstrous fires of Australia telling which group is which is trickier than it looks, sadly. Real life sucks). It is only from the fourth chapter onwards to the penultimate seventeenth that we get to see the ‘new’ classification of mammals, and it is as follows: the Xenarthrans – sloths, armadillos and anteaters of the Americas; the Afrotheres; and the Laurasiatheres. Mazel Tov! More precisely, proportionally speaking, we got the Afrotheres – elephants, sea cows, hyraxes, aardvarks, elephant shrews, tenreks, and several other mammal orders, both extinct and still existing. We got the already-mentioned Xenarthrans – and we got all the other placental mammals, aka the Eutheres, which are more closely related to each other than to the Xenarthrans or the Afrotheres. Fair enough, but the result is a great unwieldy mess that doesn’t seem to serve any practical function other than to tickle the egos of various men and women of science – I seriously doubt that anyone else will be particularly impressed by it. Mr. Prothero may state that such outdated terms as ‘Reptilia’ and ‘Amphibia’ (and ‘Mammalia’?) will soon vanish from the professional scientific nomenclature and works, even though the lay public does not know it, but just because they do not know it, does not mean that it will accept it, certainly not easily or graciously.

True science doesn’t need that, science is science, it is its’ own reward? Maybe, but given that Mr. Prothero has released a very thorough and visually impressive picture book for adults, (it includes even images from Wikicommons – really, Mr. Prothero? Really?), trying his best to sell it to people not just literally, but figuratively as well. Considering that the book is a heterogeneous mess, I am not so sure that he had succeeded. True, unlike most Western books, ‘TPGPM’ has both an intro (the first chapter) and an epilogue (the last, eighteenth chapter, which talks about prehistoric mammals and their extinctions, and of course it is the humans’ fault), and it has done its’ best to be professional, entertaining and the like. The problem is that human beings are contrary and unpredictable and you just cannot be sure that they will swallow whatever you try to sell them no matter how pretty the wrapper is or how sweet you consider your product to be. Professional scientists may be retiring the old terms of ‘Reptilia’, ‘Amphibia’ and so on, but odds are that the public will transition to this product will take much longer, and will be much rougher, than how Mr. Prothero and his fellow scientists, expects – real life sucks, remember? (Just look at the Disney/SW mess, for an example!)...

…Well, this is it for now; see you all soon!