BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, researchlibraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research.

Return to the Sea: The Life and Evolutionary Times of Marine MammalsAuthor(s): J. G. M. ThewissenSource: Journal of Mammalogy, 94(5):1179-1179. 2013.Published By: American Society of MammalogistsDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1644/13-MAMM-R-097.1URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1644/13-MAMM-R-097.1

BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in the biological, ecological, andenvironmental sciences. BioOne provides a sustainable online platform for over 170 journals and books publishedby nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.

Your use of this PDF, the BioOne Web site, and all posted and associated content indicates your acceptance ofBioOne’s Terms of Use, available at www.bioone.org/page/terms_of_use.

Usage of BioOne content is strictly limited to personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial inquiriesor rights and permissions requests should be directed to the individual publisher as copyright holder.

BOOK REVIEW

Journal of Mammalogy, 94(5):1179, 2013

� 2013 American Society of Mammalogists

Berta, A. 2012. RETURN TO THE SEA: THE LIFE AND

EVOLUTIONARY TIMES OF MARINE MAMMALS. University of

California Press, Berkeley, California, 205 pp. ISBN 978-0-

520-27057-2, price (hardbound), $31.26.

Annalisa Berta is probably best known for having written

Marine Mammals: Evolutionary Biology, the leading textbook

and reference for her field, now in its 3rd edition. That book

treats its subject matter exhaustively and forms a prime

reference for the serious professional and student of marine

mammal science. Dr. Berta’s new book, reviewed here, aims at

a different audience. As stated in its preface, the need for it

became clear while teaching nonbiology college majors. In

order to appeal to that crowd, one needs to skip the jargon,

emphasize concepts and major points, be well illustrated, and

have clear examples.

Berta is ideally qualified to write a book for undergraduates

on this subject. Her research is carried out on the interface of

the study of modern and fossil marine mammals, and she has

taught undergraduate audiences for 30 years. She is actively

involved in research on different groups of marine mammals,

in particular pinnipeds and cetaceans, and, with her students,

has covered a range of subdisciplines, from biogeography and

systematics to anatomy.

The book itself fulfills every promise that a science book for

nonscience majors should make. In its initial chapters, it

chooses a limited number of concepts that can be generalized

to all of biology, and that are explained using examples from

marine mammals: evolutionary hierarchies, adaptation, and

speciation, for instance. Simple graphics and handsome

drawings illustrate the concepts. The book also provides basic

background about paleontology, important because most of the

readers will be biology, not geology, majors. We learn how

fossils are altered by taphonomic processes, how we know their

age, and we receive a basic explanation of the role that plate

tectonics plays. Paleoecology is explained too, by following

marine mammal communities over time, showing the dynamics

of the time and space axis that paleontological samples

provides.

Nearly half of the book provides the basics on the groups of

marine mammals: cetaceans, pinnipeds, sirenians, marine

otters, and polar bears as well as the extinct aquatic sloths

and desmostylians. For each of these chapters, the modern

clades included are discussed with the most important of their

fossil relatives. These discussions are not exhaustive and not

consistent between clades, but that is a benefit for the

undergraduate audience, because it allows a focus on the more

exciting aspects of the biology of a species, leaving the details

for the technical literature. Nice black-and-white drawings of

animals, most of them by Carl Buell, help to reader to visualize

the species discussed.

The last chapter is entitled Ecology and Conservation and

gives good baseline information. Conservation is technically

not part of evolutionary biology, but it is likely to be of interest

for undergraduate readers and adds a timely and modern feel to

the discussion. The book is completed by an excellent glossary,

a rather abbreviated bibliography, and an appropriate index.

What I particularly appreciate about this book is its

succinct discussions of biological aspects, free from jargon

and well illustrated. A discussion of diet and feeding in

sirenians, for instance, consists of just about a page in text.

In it, Berta captures the essence of sirenians well: their sea-

grass diet and the shape of the lips and teeth that collect and

process the food. The long, hindgut-fermenting gut, so

different from that of foregut-fermenting ruminants, is

discussed, as well the anomalous diet of Steller’s sea cow.

A page and a half of illustrations support the text and make

it easy to digest.

If I have regrets about this book, they come when I compare

it to other undergraduate textbooks. Most of those are lavish

productions, brimming with color and fonts. This book’s feel is

more scholarly and subdued and will have to excite its

audience with the material presented, not the presentation of

the material. No doubt, the higher costs of more exuberant

productions played a role in the production decisions, because

most universities are unlikely to start teaching marine

mammalogy classes, and sales are unlikely to skyrocket. I

hope I am wrong, and that this book can excite college teachers

and their audiences about marine mammalogy. If this book is

picked up by more colleges, one might hope that the

production decisions are reconsidered for the next edition.

—J. G. M. THEWISSEN, Ingalls-Brown Professor ofAnatomy, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology,Northeast Ohio Medical University, Rootstown, OH44240, USA; thewisse@neomed.edu.

w w w . m a m m a l o g y . o r g

1179