Profusely illustrated

With just over a month to go until my deadline to hand in Pygmy Elephants to the publishers, I've been going through the illustrations, and I'm shocked to discover there's nearly 100 of them. Here's a sneak preview of some of them, in glorious black-and-white, due to the no-nonsense nature of the print-on-demand printing process. All these images copyright Matt Salusbury, all rights reserved.

Close-up of a juvenile captive elephant's head, Periyar River, Kerala, India

Dr Victoria Herridge holding a Mediterranean fossil pygmy elephant tooth, "backstage" at the Natural History Museum, London.

Deinotherium - an early relative of the elephants - compared to the contemporary early hominid Austraopithecus, with whom its shared the Rift Valley in East Africa. 1/25th scale models by Bullyland, from author's collection

Elephas mniadriensis, another Mediterranean pygmy elephant, a taller "intermediate" form. It was a later arrival to the Mediterranean islands.

The giant sengi, a relative of the elephant shrews, but half as big again as the next biggest member of the elephant shrew family. Recently discovered in a Tanzanian "island forest", it's an example of island forest adaptations, in which larger mammals often become smaller and small mammals often become bigger. The giant sengi is also a (very) distant relative of the elephants. There's more in the book, Pygmy Elephants, out in time for Christmas.