A classic work from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History describing the mosasaurs, a group of large predatory marine lizards of the Mesozoic Mosasaurs have captured the imagination of readers everywhere interested in prehistoric life, and they remain a focus of paleontological study to this day. This edition of Dale Russell's Systematics and Morphology of American Mosasaurs presents the complete, classic text, generously illustrated with more than one hundred drawings and photographs, and includes a new foreword by vertebrate paleontologist Jacques A. Gauthier (Yale University and Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History). Distributed for the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History

That humans originated from Africa is well-known. However, this is widely regarded as a chance outcome, dependant simply on where our common ancestor shared the land with where the great apes lived. This volume builds on from the 'Out of Africa' theory, and takes the view that it is only in Africa that the evolutionary transitions from a forest-inhabiting frugivore to savanna-dwelling meat-eater could have occurred. This book argues that the ecological circumstances that shaped these transitions are exclusive to Africa. It describes distinctive features of the ecology of Africa, with emphasis on savanna grasslands, and relates them to the evolutionary transitions linking early ape-men to modern humans. It shows how physical features of the continent, especially those derived from plate tectonics, set the foundations. This volume adequately conveys that we are here because of the distinctive features of the ecology of Africa.