Roll over image to zoom in Click on image to zoom

Horns, Tusks, and Flippers

Name: Horns, Tusks, and Flippers
Brand: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
SKU: 9780801871351
Price: 184.0 AUD
Availability: InStock

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESSISBN: 9780801871351

The Evolution of Hoofed Mammals

Price:

$184.00

Stock:

Out of Stock - Available to backorder

Quantity:

By Donald R. Prothero, Robert M. Schoch
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Release Date: May 14, 2003
Format: HARDBACK
Pages: 384

Share this product

Button Actions

Please copy the ISBN for submitting review copy form

Since the extinction of the dinosaurs, hoofed mammals have been the planet's dominant herbivores. Native to all continents except Australia and Antarctica, they include not only even-toed artiodactyls (pigs, hippos, camels, deer, antelopes, giraffes, sheep, goats, and cattle) and odd-toed perissodactyls (horses and rhinos), but also tethytheres (elephants and their aquatic relatives, manatees and seas cows) and cetaceans (whales and dolphins), which descended from hoofed land mammals. Recent paleontological and biological discoveries have deepened our understanding of their evolution and in some cases have made previous theories obsolete. In Horns, Tusks, and Flippers, Donald R. Prothero and Robert M. Schoch present a compelling new evolutionary history of these remarkable creatures, combining the latest scientific evidence with the most current information about their ecology and behavior. Using an approach based on cladistics, the authors consider both living and extinct ungulates. Included in their discussion are the stories of rhinos, whose ancestors include both dinosaur-sized hornless species and hippo-like river waders; elephants, whose earliest ancestors had neither tusks nor trunks; and whales, whose descent from hoofed mesonychids has never properly been described for the lay audience. Prothero and Schoch also update the evolutionary history of the horse, correcting the frequent errors made in textbooks and popular works, and they make available to the general public new evidence about the evolution of camels, horned antelopes, and cattle. In addition, they raise important conservation issues and relate anecdotes of significant fossil finds. Scientifically accurate and up to date, generously illustrated, and clearly written, Horns, Tusks, and Flippers is a useful and much-needed resource for specialists in the fields of paleontology, zoology, ecology, and evolutionary biology, as well as for general readers interested in learning more about the story of life on earth.

Contents:Preface and Acknowledgments1. Introduction

American savanna

Names and dates

Hoofed mammals

Uinta beasts and the Cope-Marsh wars

The lost world2. Cloven hooves

The kingdom of cloven hooves

Gut reactions

""Bunny deer""

Phosphate and fossils

Pseudopigs

Sui generis

""Nebraska man"" and javelinas

The ""river horse""3. Tylopods

Camels without humps

Ships of the desert

""Mountain tooth""4. Where the deer and the antelope play

Graveyard of the Amazons

Horns and antlers

""Mouse deer""

The ""forest donkey""

The camelopard

Deer perfume

All-Americanbut not an antelope

Deer to us all

Abbé David and his deer5. Hollow horns

A world of bovids

Bovines

Auroachs and wisent

Where the buffalo roam

Cattle call

Diving bucks

""Bright eyes""

Mountain monarchs6. A whale's tale

Dr. Koch's ""sea serpent""

Walking whales?

Andrew's giant ""bear""

The pedigree of Leviathan

Life of Leviathan

""So long, and thanks for all the fish""

Moby Dick, Flipper, and their kin

Filter-feeding monsters

Save the whales!7. Out of Africa

The tethytheres

Mermaids

The ""feeble folk""8. The origin on Jumbo

Giants in the earth

Early tuskers

The ""Great Missourium""

Shovel-tuskers and gomphotheres

Elephant grinders

Wooly wanderers

The mystery of the missing mammoths9. Kingdom of ivory

Behold the behemoth

Behemoth biology

The sisterhood

God and slave

Blood and ivory10. A horse of a different color (and shape)

The origin of perissodactyls

The ""hyrax beast""

Cuvier's ""ancient beast""

Halfway horses

Browsing anchitheres

Grazing horses

The hipparion controversy11. Equus

One-toed horses

Stripes do not a zebra make

Wild asses

Wild and domesticated horses12. Thunder beasts

The legend of the Thunder Beasts

Bone rush

Osborn, Asia, and orthogenesis

The biology of brontotheres13. Proboscises and claws

Dragon's teeth

Hall of the mountain cow

Chalicotheres don't obey Cuvier's Law

Just what are chalicotheres?

Moropomorphs14. Rhinoceroses without horns

""Ancient Dacians"" and Siberian mummies

American rhinos

The amphibious amynodonts

Running rhinos and rhino giants

True rhinoceroses

Miocene invasions

Rhinoceros Pompeii

Hairy rhinos and giant ""unicorns""15. Thundering to extinction

Unicorn, monoceros, and rhinoceros

Black and white

One-horned rhinos

Horns of doom

Epilogue

References

Index

""I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the morphological perspective on the evolution of hoofed mammals and particularly to those wanting to learn more about the fossil record of individual clades. It is enjoyable and informative.""

Horns, Tusks, and Flippers

Request Academic Copy

Description

You may also like

Recently viewed