Xiaoming Wang

Even with the best intentions in the world it's often hard to make paleozoology a crisp and understandable topic, but the authors do hit their marks, with an assist from Mauricio Anton's fine artistic conceptions. Perhaps the most interesting part to me was not the portions dealing with dogs as we know them, but those animals of the wider family that evolved in parallel, such as so-called "bone-eaters" that somewhat paralleled the hyenas in life style (an example of which graces the cover of the book).… (mehr)

Beware! This is not "a breezy and highly engaging romp through the rich history of the Canidae." It is a difficult discussion of the millions of years of evolution that first produced a primitive canid from early carnivores. From this first canid, came a highly diverse number of species, most now extinct. It is richly illustrated and gives detailed descriptions and probably behaviors of each species. Although the book will appeal primarily to those interested in the evolution of the dog, it is interesting. What I found fascinating is that the original Canidae evolved in North America, later crossed the Bering Strait into Asia and Europe, populating the planet up to China, and later, after evolving into yet more species, made their way back to the New World.… (mehr)