Call them "mudpuppies," "hellbenders," or "mud eels," salamanders are puzzling animals to most people. They come in forms that look like flattened fish with legs, like eels, like slimy lizards, or like lizards with toad-like skins. Their life history imitates the ancient evolutionary transition from aquatic to terrestrial vertebrates, though several groups remain permanently aquatic. Until now, no one has written about their ancient ancestors. Holman details the process of the identification and interpretation of the fossils. He presents a detailed systematic account of the known fossil salamanders of North America, illustrates and discusses the extinct salamanders, re-diagnosing or redescribing some on the basis of additional information and fossil material. He also gives the modern characteristics, ecological attributes, and modern ranges of the fossil taxa that are still living. The book begins with an overview of the Caudata and describes their early evolution. Then follow the systematic and chronological accounts of the salamanders. The book concludes with a discussion of the study of fossil salamanders as it relates to the development of a realistic phylogeny and classification of the group.

The meat-eating dinosaurs, or Theropoda, include some of the fiercest predators that ever lived. Some of the group s members survive to this day as birds. The theropod/bird connection has been explored in several recent works, but this book presents 17 papers on a variety of other topics. It is organized into three parts. Part I explores morphological details that are important for understanding theropod systematics. Part II focuses on specific regions of theropod anatomy and biomechanics. Part III examines various lines of evidence that reveal something about theropods as living creatures.

The contributors are Ronan Allain, Rinchen Barsbold, Kenneth Carpenter, Karen Cloward, Rodolfo A. Coria, Philip J. Currie, Peter M. Galton, Robert Gay, Donald M. Henderson, Dong Huang, James I. Kirkland, Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Eva B. Koppelhus, Peter Larson, Junchang Lu, Lorrie A. McWhinney, Clifford Miles, Ralph E. Molnar, N. Murphy, John H. Ostrom, Gregory S. Paul, Licheng Qiu, J. Keith Rigby, Jr., Bruce Rothschild, Christopher B. Ruff, Leonardo Salgado, Frank Sanders, Julia T. Sankey, Judith A. Schiebout, David K. Smith, Barbara R. Standhardt, Kathy Stokosa, Darren H. Tanke, Francois Therrien, David Trexler, Kelly Wicks, Douglas G. Wolfe, and Lowell Wood."

The large, quadrupedal herbivores known as sauropods were widespread around the planet from the Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous. With the longest necks and tails of all of the dinosaurs, some sauropods were 40 meters in length and weighed upwards of 100,000 kilograms, more than 20 tons. The popular image of these lumbering giants, placidly consuming ferns has been greatly revised in recent years. New discoveries and new theories about behavior and physiology have continued to enrich the study of these remarkable beasts. This book presents 21 new studies of the sauropods. The book is organized into four parts. The first part looks at some sauropods old and new, the second at juvenile and adult specimens and ontogenetic variation within species. Part three concerns morphology and biomechanics, while part four takes up issues of biogeography.

The contributors are Sebastian Apesteguia, Malcolm W. Bedell, Jr., David S. Berman, Matthew F. Bonnan, Kenneth Carpenter, Sankar Chatterjee, Rodolfo A. Coria, Fabio M. Dalla Vecchia, John Foster, Peter M. Galton, Jacques van Heerden, Takehito Ikejiri, Jean Le Loeuff, D. M. Mohabey, John S. McIntosh, J. Michael Parrish, Bruce M. Rothschild, Leonardo Salgado, Steven W. Salisbury, Allen Shaw, Kenneth Stadtman, Kent A. Stevens, Virginia Tidwell, David Trexler, Ray Wilhite, Adam M. Yates, and Zhong Zheng."

Alice Gerard has crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in the last ten years in her efforts to help solve the mystery of the controversial French site of Glozel, which has been called the "Dreyfus Affair" of archaeology. Accusations of fraud made by members of the archaeological establishment have contributed to the stormy history of the site during the last 80 years."Glozel" describes the exhaustive attempts Alice and her husband have made, working with other researchers, to understand the tombs, the tablets covered with unknown writing, the bones engraved with reindeer, and the phallic idols found at the site. In the process the Gerards made and lost good friends, became informed about a number of esoteric subjects, and finally developed a theory that might explain Glozel. The story is not finished; they hope the site will be recognized as authentic while Emile Fradin, who discovered the first artifacts in 1924, is still alive.

Quaternary Palaeoecology, first published in 1980, discusses the methods and approaches by which Quaternary environments can be reconstructed from the fossil and sedimentary record. This knowledge is of great value as the Quaternary was a time of rapid ecological change, culminating in the present pattern and diversity of ecosystems. It is possible not only to relate these changes to fluctuating climates but also to infer what Man's early influence may have been. The authors describe how past flora and fauna can be reconstructed and how the numbers of fossils can be used to reconstruct past plant and animal populations and communities, and past environments. John Birks has researched in a variety of fields within Quaternary palaeoecology, including pollen analysis and vegetation history, environmental change, past climate reconstruction, and palaeolimnology. Since the 1980s he has introduced and developed numerical methods and quantitative approaches into palaeoecology and palaeolimnology. Besides research in Norway and the UK, he has also worked on palaeoecological problems in Svalbard, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Minnesota, and the Yukon. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and has published widely on many aspects of Quaternary palaeoecology. He is currently Professor of Quantitative Palaeoecology at the University of Bergen, Norway, and University College London, UK. Hilary Birks researches on palaeoecology and past climates primarily through the use of plant macrofossil analysis. She took up the study of plant macrofossils in Minnesota, USA in 1970, where she investigated the modern representation of plants in lake sediments by their fruits and seeds, and also worked on the palaeolimnological record of recent eutrophication and late-glacial palaeoecology. Since then she has extended her macrofossil studies to the late-glacial of Scotland and western Norway, the full-glacial of Beringia (Alaska) and recent changes in North African lakes brought about by human activities. She is Professor of Palaeoecology at the University of Bergen, Norway and teaches palaeoecology at the University of Bergen and University College London, UK.

“A superb introduction to paleontology as it really is and how it is done, from fish to dinosaur, bird, and mammal.” —Edward O. Wilson

Michael Novacek, a renowned paleontologist who has discovered important fossils on virtually every continent, is an authority on patterns of evolution and on the relationships among extinct and extant organisms. Time Traveler is his captivating account of how his boyhood enthusiasm for dinosaurs became a lifelong commitment to vanguard science. Novacek writes of the alluring perils of fieldwork with affection and discernment, and he illuminates the most exciting issues in paleontology today.

Based on an analysis of remains recovered from middens excavated at Mesolithic sites in Denmark, Milner's thesis aims to provide a methodology for identifying the seasonality of the European oyster. This in turn increases our understanding of the subsistence patterns of European hunter-gatherers. Much of the study examines the results of a modern control experiment. Includes an index of sites.

In some cases, scientific research into the space-time continuum may have unexpected] consequences... as occurs in Isaac Asimov s short story "'A Statue for Daddy.' In this tale... two scientists... recover 14 dinosaur eggs. The eggs are carefully incubated, and they hatch bipedal dinosaurs about the same size as a medium-sized dog. One of them is accidentally electrocuted, and the scientists discover that their meat is truly exquisite. They become fabulously rich rearing and marketing dinosaur meat under the name of 'dinochicken.'"

Ever since the discovery of the first fossil remains in the 19th century, dinosaurs have captured the imaginations of scientists and inspired writers, artists, and filmmakers. Dinosaurs, and legends about them are firmly entrenched in popular culture, where scientific information and our interest in the life of the past most often meet. Starring T. Rex considers dinosaurs as a cultural phenomenon, seen as the interaction of three factors paleontological discoveries, the cultural interest these discoveries awaken, and the possibilities they offer for commercial exploitation. Jose Luis Sanz explains that the knowledge generated by paleontologists enters popular culture at a mythological level and that the mass communication media (for example, science fiction literature, comic books, television, and movies) are the vehicles that link science and its reflection in culture.

Sanz first analyzes the historical origins of the dinosaur myth in modern society. He then considers the manner in which information drawn from scientific study enters popular consciousness, discussing, among other things, the coexistence of men and dinosaurs, what dinosaurs looked like, extinction, the presence of dinosaurs in fantasy stories, and the relationship between dinosaurs and dragons."

In this adventure-filled narrative, science writer Richard Stone follows two groups of explorers--one a Russian-Japanese team, the other a French-led consortium--as they battle bitter cold, high winds, and supply shortages to carry out their quest. Armed with GPS, ground-penetrating radar, and Soviet-era military helicopters, they seek an elusive prize: a mammoth carcass that will help determine how the creature lived, how it died--and how it might be brought back to life.A riveting tale of high-stakes adventure and scientific hubris, Mammoth is also an intellectual voyage through uncharted moral terrain, as we confront the promise and peril of resurrecting creatures from the deep past.

Richard Leakey began his career following in the footsteps of his famous parents Mary and Louis, and becoming a renowned paleoanthropologist and head of Kenya's National Museums. In 1989, Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi put Leakey in charge of the Kenyan Wildlife Service. Ivory pachers were killing hundreds of elephants annually and the organization was close to collapse. Leakey sacked corrupt rangers and brough in millions of dollars from international donors to help enforce a ban on the ivory trade. But when Moi accused the service of corruption, Leakey quit, later forming an opposition party. He clashed with Moi but in July 1999 Moi appointed him head of Kenya's civil service and secretary to the Cabinet. He is now charged with ridding the government of corruption and jump-starting the economy.

Set in nineteenth-century England, The Dragon Seekers chronicles the amazing discoveries of the first fossilists, whose findings in geology and paleontology led to the discovery of the age of dinosaurs. The intriguing cast of characters includes Mary Anning, a working-class woman who became one of the most successful fossil collectors of all time; Thomas Hawkins, another amateur collector who improved upon fossils in order to increase their market value; the eccentric William Buckland, discoverer of the world's first dinosaur (Megalosaurus), and Richard Owen, an expert anatomist, who synthesized the discoveries of the age and ultimately coined the word dinosaur in 1842. Christopher McGowan takes us back to a time when the new sciences of geology and paleontology were as young and vibrant as genetic engineering is today. Through heated public debates on everything from the age of the earth to the notion of extinction, the Dragon Seekers initiated the shift from a biblical to a scientific interpretation of the remote past. In this way, they laid the intellectual groundwork for Darwin's revolutionary ideas, and launched a global obsession with the Age of Reptiles that continues even today.

..". are dinosaurs social constructs? Do we really know anything about dinosaurs? Might not all of our beliefs about dinosaurs merely be figments of the paleontological imagination? A few years ago such questions would have seemed preposterous, even nonsensical. Now they must have a serious answer."

At stake in the "Science Wars" that have raged in academe and in the media is nothing less than the standing of science in our culture. One side argues that science is a "social construct," that it does not discover facts about the world, but rather constructs artifacts disguised as objective truths. This view threatens the authority of science and rejects science s claims to objectivity, rationality, and disinterested inquiry. Drawing Out Leviathan examines this argument in the light of some major debates about dinosaurs: the case of the wrong-headed dinosaur, the dinosaur "heresies" of the 1970s, and the debate over the extinction of dinosaurs.

Keith Parsons claims that these debates, though lively and sometimes rancorous, show that evidence and logic, not arbitrary "rules of the game," remained vitally important, even when the debates were at their nastiest. They show science to be a complex set of activities, pervaded by social influences, and not easily reducible to any stereotype. Parsons acknowledges that there are lessons to be learned by scientists from their would-be adversaries, and the book concludes with some recommendations for ending the Science Wars."

"A highly readable survey of the historical prelude to the study of the origins of life, as well as selected areas of current research, including the search for extraterrestrial life."-NatureWhere did we come from? Did life arise on earth or on some other planet? What did the earliest primitive organisms look like? Untangling a century of contentious debate, the authors explore current theories of the source of life-from Martian meteors to hydrothermal vents-and then present their own elegant scenario: Life arose not in the subterranean depths, as many believe, but on Earth's tumultuous surface, where a primitive form of natural selection spawned the first genetic material, perhaps in the form of a proto-virus. Knowing exactly how life began on Earth will not only teach us more about ourselves, it will bring us closer to finding life elsewhere.

In 1990, the skeleton of a battle-scarred Tyrannosaurus rex matriarch was found, virtually complete, in what many call the most spectacular dinosaur fossil discovery to date. Not just another dinosaur book, Tyrannosaurus Sue is a fascinating introduction to the centuries-old history of commercial fossil hunting, a legal thriller and a provocative look at academic versus commercial science and the chase for the money that fuels both. - Steve Fiffer, an attorney who has followed the story for the past seven years, has captured the whole range of characters and issues embroiled in the fight for Sue. Fiffer communicates both the excitement over Sue's discovery and the motivations, manoeuvrings, and absurdities of the various forces attempting to control her destiny.

This fascicle describes the background of the Franchthi project and its excavation history and methodology. Particle size, mineralogy, and chemistry are all taken into consideration as the cultural remains and the sediments from the cave are analyzed to determine their origin and history. William Farrand constructs an integrated stratigraphy for the entire cave using excavators notes, laboratory analyses, and personal field data to correlate sequences in separate trenches. On the basis of some 60 radiocarbon dates, the evolution and chronology of the sedimentary fill is postulated."

The author describes forty-two fossil taxa recovered during a study of the San Timoteo Badlands that used magnetobiostratigraphy to develop a temporal framework for addressing the tectonic evolution of southern California over the last 6 million years. For the Pliocene, small mammals are an effective means of correlating a magnetostratigraphy to the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale when radioisotopic dates are unobtainable.

Whether dodging bullets in West Africa, or rabid dogs in Pakistan, surviving yak-butter tea in Tibet, or eating raw fish in China, the life of a globe-trotting fossil hunter is often hazardous and always filled with surprises. Travels with the Fossil Hunters lets readers share the wonder, joys of discovery, and excitement of these intrepid scientists. Packed with more than 100 beautiful, full-color photographs, the volume takes readers on twelve expeditions to remote parts of the world in search of diverse fossil remains, from those of dinosaurs to human ancestors. Each expedition by paleontologists from London's Natural History Museum reveals the problems and challenges of working in extreme conditions, from the deserts of the Sahara and Yemen to the frozen wastes of Antarctica, from the mountains of India to the forests of Latvia. Along the way they also describe the paleontology and geology of the countries they visit and the scientific reasons for their expeditions. With a foreword from Sir David Attenborough and an introduction from Richard Fortey, this fascinating book will appeal to amateur and professional fossil hunters alike and to readers interested in accounts of exotic locales. Peter Whybrow is a research scientist at the Natural History Museum, London. His research interests include Arabian Miocene vertebrates, paleoclimates, paleogeography, and biotic diversity. He is senior editor with A. Hill of Fossil Vertebrates of Arabia (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999).

Pokines uses the terrestrial mammalian microfauna from the site of El Juyo (Santander, Spain) and related sites to reconstruct the palaeoenvironment of Cantabrian Spain. A new method of reconstruction is presented, based on the relative proprtions of these microfauna, and the human ecological adaptations of the Upper Palaeolithic in Cantabrian Spain are examined as they relate to the resulting interpretation of the palaeoenvironment.

As a novel endeavour in ecological science, this book focuses on a major issue in organismal life on Earth: species coexistence. The book crosses the usual disciplinary boundaries between palaeobiology, ecology and evolutionary biology and provides a timely overview of the patterns and processes of species diversity and coexistence on a range of spatio-temporal scales. In this unique synthesis, the author offers a critical and penetrating examination of the concepts and models of coexistence and community structure, thus making a valuable contribution to the field of community ecology. There is an emphasis on clarity and accessibility without sacrificing scientific rigour, making this book suitable for both advanced students and individual researchers in ecology, palaeobiology and environmental and evolutionary biology.
Comprehensive and contemporary synthesis.
Pulls together the aggregate influence of evolution and ecology on patterns in communities.
Balanced mix of theory and empirical work.
Clearly structured chapters with short introduction and summary.

Just 12,000 years ago - at the height of the last Ice Age - saber-toothed tigers, giant ground sloths, camels, hippos and the great herds of proboscideans: giant mastodons and mammoths, extinct relatives of the elephant, roamed the land where skyscrapers now stand. Why are these splendid creatures no longer with us? This compelling book explores the reasons for these extinctions and provides a tour of mass extinctions throughout earth's history, including the great comet crash that killed off the dinosaurs. Brilliantly written, The Call of Distant Mammoths is an engaging exploration of the history of life and the importance of humanity as an evolutionary force.

The great dinosaur bone beds of the American and Canadian West are world famous and have yielded spectacular fossil finds. But the eastern United States and maritime Canada, where dinosaurs also roamed in great numbers, have been equally important to the study of these extraordinary creatures. Some dinosaur fossils have come from the bog iron and clay pits of Maryland and New Jersey, while others have been discovered in the riverbanks of North and South Carolina. Dinosaur footprint sites have been found from central Virginia to the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.

In "Dinosaurs of the East Coast," David Weishampel and Luther Young restore East Coast dinosaurs to their rightful place on the paleontological map. They describe such dinosaurs as the plant-eating "Astrodon johnstoni," which browsed in a tropical Maryland jungle 100 million years ago; "Anchisaurus polyzelus," which lived in New England some 200 million years ago; "Eubrontes," the first large therapod on the East Coast; "Pekinosaurus olseni," a primitive ornithischian found in North Carolina; and "Hadrosaurus foulkii," a duck-billed dinosaur that lived in New Jersey some 70 million years ago. In addition, they chronicle the long and colorful history of dinosaur fossil hunting along the Atlantic coast and profile the modern-day fossil hunters--both professional paleontologists and amateur collecters--who continue to make important discoveries today. Richly illustrated with more than one hundred photographs and drawings, "Dinosaurs of the East Coast" combines science and history to offer a new look at an always fascinating subject.

In 1861, just a few years after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, a scientist named Hermann von Meyer made an amazing discovery. Hidden in the Bavarian region of Germany was a fossil skeleton so exquisitely preserved that its wings and feathers were as obvious as its reptilian jaws and tail. This transitional creature offered tangible proof of Darwin's theory of evolution.

Hailed as the First Bird, Archaeopteryx has remained the subject of heated debates for the last 140 years. Are birds actually living dinosaurs? Where does the fossil record really lead? Did flight originate from the "ground up" or "trees down"? Pat Shipman traces the age-old human desire to soar above the earth and to understand what has come before us. Taking Wing is science as adventure story, told with all the drama by which scientific understanding unfolds.