https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-rise-and-reign-of-the-mammals-by-steve-brusatte-review-g53hvvczg

…Brusatte is best known as a dinosaur expert. The author of The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs recently scored what must surely be a dream gig for someone who has devoted much of his career to Tyrannosaurus rex, as a consultant on the next Jurassic Park film.

So why has his attention drifted to mammals? He says the answer is simple: dinosaurs are amazing, but they are not us. Since we belong to the mammalian club, this is a book that plots our ancestry, all the way back to the steamy Carboniferous coal swamp where our lineage first split from that of the reptiles. It is saga on the grandest scale: the tale of how our forebears survived an apocalypse and how their progeny rose up to rule the world. There is a wonderful subplot: the story of how humans became the only species capable of considering their origins.

Really interesting and needs to be read. I am very much of the opinion that we have got it all wrong when we elevate ourselves because of some wonderful interactions I have had with other species. I love it that we call ourselves Homo sapiens sapiens, given that we got to do the naming it seems rather presumptuous and possibly very wrong. And now we discover we are surrounded by other kinds of beings and other orders of existence that do not rate us so highly it seems. I definitely need to see how this book develops the idea of us.

i watched a wonderful documentary about oak trees. It finished with a view of the world theoretically available to the tree based on all of its sensory and reactive abilities, wonderfully the world appeared visually totally familiar to us. The latest biological research shows truly complicated relationships and interactions across forests via root systems and mycelia and through chemical secretions into the environment, above and below ground. Trees look after offspring, have friends and enemies and strategies for mutual aid. We hardly understand anything yet about the biological world and even less about the universal matrix of sentience. I bet the trees weep at the cruel heartlessness of our kind and roll on the floor laughing at our hubris.