Table of Contents

1: What is a mammal?
2: The origin of mammals
3: The radiation of mammals
4: Carnivorous mammals
5: Herbivorous mammals
6: Diggers and burrowers
7: Aquatic mammals
8: Flying mammals
9: Primates
10: Humans and mammals: the past and the future
References
Further Reading
Index

About the Author

Dr T. S. Kemp is Emeritus Research Fellow at St John's College, Oxford, and a widely respected expert on the evolution of mammals. He is the author of several books widely used by students, including The Origin and Evolution of Mammals (OUP, 2005), and The Origin of Higher Taxa (OUP, 2015).

Reviews

Mammals: A Very Short Introduction is part of a series of very short introductions published by Oxford University Press. These are gateway books, designed to draw readers into a topic and invite them to dive deeper if the topic is of interest. In this regard, Tom Kemp has done our profession a great service. We should all have a short stack of these books available to hand out to undergraduates we hope to recruit to the study of mammalogy ... In short, this very short introduction to mammals is a welcome addition to the ... series.
*Christopher J Yahnke, Mammology*

Tom Kemp is the world's senior authority on the origin and evolution of mammals, and an excellent writer to boot. I very much recommend this concise book as an apt introduction to the palaeobiology of our own peculiar branch on the Tree of Life
*Dr Robert Asher, Curator of Vertebrates, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge*