While everyone has heard of the many different kinds of dinosaurs, how many people have heard of the indricotheres, chalicotheres, dinotheres or even our own ancestors the plesiadapiforms? Hopefully, after the showing of the BBC TV series Walking with Beasts and this superb book from Tim Haines, we might have a better idea about the life and times of our own mammal relatives and ancestors. Designed for the general reader, the story follows a mixture of chronology and environmental themes from the "New Dawn" following the demise of the dinosaurs, when mammals were just beginning to find their feet again, through to "Whale Killer", describing when mammals first took to life in the oceans and evolved awesome top predators such as the 18m Basilosaurus. The strange extinct mammals such as the indricotheres figure in the "Land of the Giants" and our own human story is told, culminating in the Ice Age and the question of our ancestors' hand in extinctions. The computer-generated images produced by Daren Horley's team are absolutely stunning and are, if anything, better than those in Walking with Dinosaurs. The animals look especially convincing in the still photos, which appear on every page. The pictures are so good that it will be hard to convince younger children that they are not real. Walking with Beasts should be on everyone's shopping list. --Douglas Palmer

Synopsis
Since the dinosaurs died out over 65 million years ago the Earth has been dominated by mammals. A succession of bizzare evolutionary specimens have come and gone, from walking whales to sabre-toothed cats. This book recreates spectacular and unfamiliar creatures in the context of their world. The book reveals the ancestors of modern mammals and the arrival of man, and transports the reader to the icy plains of the mammoth, dark forests stalked by giant carnivorous birds and deserts dominated by 15 tonne Indricotheres.