I finally have my copy of the Illustrated Checklist after long weeks of waiting. At last, I can say that I’m mostly happy with the books. It’s such a delight to browse through the pages and see all the amazing diversity of mammals. It’s a great piece of both art and science together. After a first glance at its content, I have some thoughts about the book:
1) I really like the design of the book. Putting the illustrations over a white background makes it more comfortable to observe, contrary to a gray color as in the handbook series. Also, adding some species on both sides of the spreading pages (and not only on the right page), makes it more visually appealing in my opinion.
2) I really appreciate how some taxonomic notes on certain species discuss some very recent splits occurring while the book was in its final stages of production (ej. as in Petaurus breviceps), even though it doesn’t include illustrations (which I found understandable, as it would mean a last minute change in the overall design and layout of some parts of both books). On the same note, it's great to see some minor last minute updates, such as changing the status of the Common Hamster from Least Concern to Critically Endangered (as compared to the sample pages on their website).
3) The prosimians, old world monkeys, gibbons and great apes illustrations are a really great improvement compared to the original illustrations used in the handbook. I would have preferred to see the prosimians as the gibbons and orangutans, with no branches with them, but overall they are equally a joy to see. I have to say that, sadly, new world monkeys illustrations are not as improved as the rest of the primates: they used the old marmosets and tamarins illustrations with the exceptions of three species and a lot of the rest of the families are depicted in the same position (most notably in most of the howler monkeys). Why did they keep the marmosets and tamarins illustrations? In their exhibition catalogue they showed a Common marmoset illustration with a great quality, but they didn’t use it in the final checklist. I just would have wished that they were depicted just as good as the old world monkeys, but sadly it wasn’t the case.
4) New world monkeys aside, I have some problems with certain illustrations. Some of them are of very small size, even though there is enough blank space left in the page. Other illustrations have a low resolution. And a lot, if not most of the illustrations for the new species added since the handbook, are a mix of already existing illustrations with minor changes (as in the genus Leopardus) or just the same illustrations with different color (the most extreme example is the Common Tapeti and all its new subspecies depicted).
5) I still would have wished they added illustrations for both the domestic species and the extinct ones. Practically, most of the species in the camel family are not depicted since most of them are domesticated. And well, omitting cattle at all (both the extant domesticated species and the extinct wild one) is sad. I know that a lot of the extinct species could not be depicted because of a lack of complete specimens (as the giant lemurs, the sardinian pika and the nesophontes), but it would have been a great addition to include at least the ones where we know how they looked like (aurochs, wild horse, thylacine and other marsupials, and the Steller’s Sea Cow I think).
After all, it’s a really great book and an extraordinarily nice conclusion to the mammal series started more than a decade ago, with some opportunities for improvement in the future.
