As of 2019, the largest carnivore (well, mostly, and at least, officially) in the UK is the Badger, an adult boar (male) of which is, on average, just over ten kilograms in weight and just under a meter in length. The largest herbivore in the same region is the Red Deer, the stag of which may reach a bit over 200 kilograms and stand one and a half meters tall as measured at the shoulder. Badgers do not prey upon Red Deer, nor are Red Deer, even given their larger-than-a-badger size, known to be a physical threat to anyone or anything, other than the occasional farm field.

Now, lets step back a few thousand years; back into the Pleistocene Epoch. Imagine a carnivore the same height at the shoulder as the modern-day Red Deer, add razor-sharp claws, flesh-piercing teeth, and a bodily muscular structure sufficient to employ both of these evolutionarily-perfected attributes to maximum advantage – you have the Cave Lion. And as to herbivores, well, take your pick from the elephant-sized Woolly Mammoth, the automobile-sized Woolly Rhinoceros, or the Megaloceros (i.e., Irish Elk, Shelk) with antlers spanning one and a half times wider than a modern Red Deer’s body is long. Dr. Ross Barnett introduces his readers to all of these astonishing creatures – and many more as well – in his remarkable book The Missing Lynx; the Past and Future of Britain’s Lost Mammals. It’s an introduction you won’t soon forget.

Beginning with an overview of the three most widely proposed theories as to why so many of the Pleistocene megafauna species are now extinct – and tipping his hand most openly as to which of these he thinks was the cause (more on that momentarily), Dr. Barnett proceeds to present his readers with detailed, scientifically accurate, and highly readable profiles of such lost creatures as the Cave Hyaena, Cave Lion, Cave Bear, Aurochs, Scimitar-toothed Cat (Homotherium latidens), and many more. He includes as well two other note-worthy mammals of the epoch – Homo neanderthalensis and the particularly influential Homo sapiens.

Taken as individual species, and presented through the remarkably talented writing style of Dr. Barnett (roughly equal parts erudition, excitement, and wit), the “missing mammals” quickly come alive to the reader. Though they are now – in most cases – known only from their bones, occasional tidbits of salvageable DNA, and the ichnological traces they left behind, through Dr. Barnett’s pen, these become the full-fleshed, living, breathing, running, snarling, grunting creatures that once populated the landscape of Pleistocene Britain. As readers, we not only come to discover and understand the life histories and ecological importance of them all, we genuinely begin to miss them as well.

This last is what truly sets The Missing Lynx above so many of the other books I’ve read about the megafauna of this epoch. In each of his presentations, Dr. Barnett’s own thoughts and feelings about these animals, and their disappearances from our world, are clearly and frankly presented – sometimes seriously, other times with a delightful spicing of humor, flippancy, good old-fashioned snark, but always with sincerity – and, to put it mildly, he doesn’t like the situation one little bit. But make no mistake; this isn’t the classic J’accuse! often found in books about extinction; his ire is squarely and – I think justly – aimed at our own ancestors’ actions.

Through their rapid expansion, partly made possible by climactically caused alterations in pathways available to the highly mobile Pleistocene Homo sapiens, as well as the technology they developed that made them the most lethal of all living creatures on the planet (a shame-laden title we continue to hold to this very day), our ancestors spread out, multiplied, and killed everything edible within their power to kill. The problem was, many of these creatures had the slow reproductive rates common to large mammals, were already ecologically “boxed in,” reduced in numbers, or suffering from losses of their own prey animals; consequently, pushing them over the edge into oblivion didn’t take intentional effort – merely the consistent hunting pressure of tribes of humans motivated to ensure their own respective survival. More recent (as presented in this book local to the UK) extinctions of such creatures as the title-inspiring Northern Lynx, Aurochs, Grey Wolf, Brown Bear, and Beaver were much more the result of fear, ignorance, self-indulgence, and base human malevolence. For myself, learning that the timespan from the discovery of the Steller’s Sea Cow by Europeans to its total extinction was the length of one single human generation nearly made me physically ill.

However Dr. Barnett is not pessimistic. As he explains in his presentation of the extinction in the UK, and subsequent reintroduction to the area, of the Beaver, some of the damage may be partly repairable, or at least able to be somewhat mitigated. Make no mistake – he’s not about to let any of us or our ancestors off the hook for our actions, either in the past or present – but as a scientist he knows that, with focused effort, determination, and – if the bio-technological genetic “resurrection” path is pursued, we are not totally helpless and condemned to live in the species-depleted Hell we too often seem determined to create for ourselves.

Most of what we have lost we cannot bring back, but in learning about the magnificent creatures that were once part of the British landscape – as well as that of the rest of the world – we can learn from the past so as not to either ignorantly or willfully repeat it. The Missing Lynx, with its copious amounts of information about the lives and extinctions of its subjects, leavened with sufficiently frequent witticisms, flippant off-hand remarks, and bits of gallows humor to make such serious subjects sufficiently psychologically palatable so as to allow them to sink in to the minds of its readers and be remembered, is s superb book by which either to begin, or deepen (as the case may be), one’s understanding of Pleistocene, as well as some Holocene, megafauna, as well as to better understand the ecological and conservation choices we must make in our own time. It is most whole-heartedly and enthusiastically recommended to all.

Title: The Missing Lynx; the Past and Future of Britain’s Lost Mammals

Author: Ross Barnett, D.Phil (Oxon) (Twitter: @DeepFriedDNA)

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Imprint: Bloomsbury Wildlife

Format: Hardback

Pages: 352 pp., w/ 8 pp. of color images

ISBN: 9781472957344

Published: August 2019

Nota bene: Among his many accomplishments, Dr. Barnett is one of the quartet who are responsible for the superb blog Twilight Beasts, a highly recommended resource for all interested in the fascinating creatures of the Pleistocene Epoch.

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.