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Title: The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives
ISBN: 0231102291
Author:
Mauricio Anton
Alan Turner
Publicate Date: 2000-06-15
Publish: 2000-06-15
List Price: $26.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $16.80
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $11.45
Amazon Merchant Price: $17.79
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| Customer Review: |
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1: The Best Book Treatment of Prehistoric Cats, PERIOD !
This is BY FAR the best book about ANY prehistoric mammals that I have ever found! The fact that the subject is cats makes the book unique. There just isn't another book like this one. The focus is on fossil cats and their modern descendants, but they are discussed in relation to the environment and the other animals around them. The text is thorough, informative and very lucid. The writing style is clear and concise, without being terse and dry. A college student or interested adult will find it technical enough not to insult their intelligence, yet it is so well plotted and presented that an enthusiastic pre-teen can follow it (although they may need some help with some of the more technical terms). Turner obviously knows and loves cats.
Now, to the illustrations. Mauricio Anton has absolutely no equal as an illustrator of cats. His illustrations of the other animals who share the cats' habitats are equally enthralling. His renderings are so lifelike that they place the reader right beside the cat. You can almost smell the dirt as it's raised by the hooves of the struggling prey and hear the sounds of interaction between cats and the creatures around them. The book is worth having for the color plates alone, but the pencil drawings are fabulous too, and in some ways even more informative than the plates.
As a lifelong student and admirer of cats of all sizes, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I reread it at least six or eight times a year, and refer to it almost daily. This book belongs in the collection of everyone who is interested in animals and wildlife art.
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2: Just Plain Wonderful!
It's hard to review this book without tossing in a bucketful of giddy superlatives, so I'll stick with WONDERFUL! It contains some of the most strikingly beautiful artwork contained in any scholarly book. Having said that, a potential reader needs to keep in mind that this isn't a "popular science" book. You'll be encountering terms like "Paleocene" and "carnassials", but even though they might be a little confusing, they won't hurt you, either.
Get this book! There may never be another work like this about the ancestral cats in print again.
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3: Informative.
I liked most everything about this book. This is a great natural history of the big cats and their various ancient ancestors going back some 25 million years. I especially enenjoyed chapters 4-Anatomy And Action, and 5-Behavior And Ecology. Also, Mr. Anton is a fine artist. This book should appeal to anyone with even a modest interest in the big cats. Both the color plates and the black and white drawings are lifelike and worth the price of the book.
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4: Feline bodybuilders
For the lay reader - such as me - the welter of taxonomical and anatomical details with which this book is filled could perhaps have made it very boring. However, the fine drawing and the speculative detail about reconstrued ecology and behavior made the book a light read, even comic at times, when you discover that sabertoothed cats were a kind of lions and tigers "on steroids", with heavily muscled forelimbs and shoulders allowing them to immobilize the prey to the ground in order to deliver a devastating neck bite that would close a windpipe and sever bloodvessels neatly and quickly. Very funny to think that evolution could have taken this alternative path of turning the gracile feline form into something like a BB contest...
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5: evolutionary history of big cats, illustrated and explained
This is a great book on the evolution of the big cats, in fact I think its probably the only book outside of research journals or more technical material. Its wonderfully illustrated with very detailed pencil drawings of skulls, skeletons, musculature, and 'life reconstructions' of exctinct big cats. Also includes color plates with scenes depicting the cats and their habitats. The text is well organized and accesible to the informed layperson and is detailed enough to satisfy those with a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
The illustrations really makes the book stand out: they are detailed and well drawn, and really bring the subject matter to life, as if you were able to examine the museum collection yourself, and then go on a prehistoric safari. An excellent choice for those interested in cat biology, natural history, or paleontology.
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