Fish, or lower vertebrates, occupy the basal nodes of the vertebrate phylogeny, and are therefore crucial in interpreting almost every feature of more advanced vertebrates, including amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Recent research focuses on combining evolutionary observations - primarily from the fish fossil record - with developmental data from living fishes, in order to better interpret evolutionary history and vertebrate phylogeny. This book highlights the importance of this research in the interpretation of vertebrate evolution, bringing together world-class palaeontologists and biologists to summarise the most interesting, current and cutting-edge topics in fish evolution and development. It will be an invaluable tool for researchers in early vertebrate palaeontology and evolution, and those particularly interested in the interface between evolution and development.

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."

In the spring and summer of 2000, geologists working for the Tennessee Department of Transportation made an extraordinary find as they examined soil at a routine road construction project: the digging at Gray, Tennessee, had uncovered a fossil site containing bones that would turn out to be at least five million years old. Harry Moore and his colleagues, along with researchers from the state and the University of Tennessee, were stunned as they unearthed the fossilized remains of tapirs, elephants, rhinoceroses, alligators, and other long-dead animals. What was at first thought to be an Ice Age site ten to twenty thousand years old proved to be much, much older. The Bone Hunters recounts the fascinating details of a remarkable chance discovery. In his engaging firsthand account, Moore writes of the people behind the excavation of the site and how their efforts helped save valuable artifacts for ongoing study. Numerous photographs capture the excellent condition of fossils at Gray. Moore also describes the contours of what the ancient landscape may have looked like and details the governmental action that ultimately preserved this Tennessee treasure. Harry Moore manages the Tennessee Department of Transportation's Geotechnial Engineering office in Knoxville. His previous books are A Roadside Guide to the Geology of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, A Geologic Trip Across Tennessee by Interstate 40, and Discovering October Roads: Fall Colors and Geology in Rural East Tennessee (co-written with Fred Brown).

Written for non-specialists, this detailed survey of dinosaur origins, diversity, and extinction is designed as a series of successive essays covering important and timely topics in dinosaur paleobiology, such as "warm-bloodedness," birds as living dinosaurs, the new, non-flying feathered dinosaurs, dinosaur functional morphology, and cladistic methods in systematics. Its explicitly phylogenetic approach to the group is that taken by dinosaur specialists. The book is not an edited compilation of the works of many individuals, but a unique, cohesive perspective on Dinosauria. Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of new, specially commissioned illustrations by John Sibbick, world-famous illustrator of dinosaurs, the volume includes multi-page drawings as well as sketches and diagrams. First edition Hb (1996): 0-521-44496-9 David E. Fastovsky is Professor of Geosciences at the University of Rhode Island. Fastovsky, the author of numerous scientific publications dealing with Mesozoic vertebrate faunas and their ancient environments, is also scientific co-Editor of Geology. He has undertaken extensive fieldwork studying dinosaurs and their environments in Montana, North Dakota, Arizona, Mexico, and Mongolia. David B. Weishampel is a professor at the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine. Weishampel is best known for discovering, researching, and naming several rare European dinosaur species. During the 1980s Weishampel gained fame for his work with American paleontologist Jack Horner and later named the famous plant-eating, egg-laying Orodromeus, Horner. Now, a decade after his pioneering studies with Horner, Weishampel is most widely known for his current work on the Romanian dinosaur fauna. He is the author and co-author of many titles, including The Dinosaur Papers, 1676-1906 (Norton, 2003); The Dinosauria, (University of California, 1990); and Dinosaurs of the East Coast, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

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.

Just 50,000 years ago the world was filled with fabulous creatures that are now forever gone. Australia s giant lizard, Megalania, was one of those. These frightful beasts could reach 19 feet in length and weigh as much as a polar bear. On their home turf they were top dog, and it was the rare animal that dared to challenge them. Dragons in the Dust tells the story of these amazing lizards and the world in which they lived. The book explores the Pleistocene, the time of the ice ages. While mammals ruled elsewhere, in Australia reptiles held their dominance. Large monitor lizards survive to this day, but the discovery of fossil remains of Megalania revealed that their ancestors were true giants and formidable predators. How scientists have reconstructed the way these animals lived and what factors encouraged their evolution make up part of the story. What caused their extinction remains a mystery, and one that makes an intriguing conclusion to this portrait of a true dragon of the past."

This book gathers the findings of a number of studies on North American cave paleontology. Although not intended to be all-inclusive, Ice Age Cave Faunas of North America contains contributions that range from overviews of the significance of cave fossils to reports about new localities and studies of specific vertebrate groups. These essays describe how cave remains record the evolutionary patterns of organisms and their biogeography, how they can help reconstruct past ecosystems and climatic fluctuations, how they provide an important record of the evolution of modern ecosystems, and even how some of these caves contain traces of human activity. The book's eclectic nature should appeal to students, professional and amateur paleontologists, biologists, geologists, speleologists, and cavers. The contributors are Ticul Alvarez, Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales, Christopher J. Bell, Larry L. Coats, Jennifer Glennon, Wulf Gose, Frederick Grady, Russell Wm. Graham, Timothy H. Heaton, Carmen J. Jans-Langel, Ernest L. Lundelius, Jr., H. Gregory McDonald, Jim I. Mead, Oscar J. Polaco, Blaine W. Schubert, Holmes A. Semken, Jr., and Alisa J. Winkler. An up-to-date exploration of vertebrate cave life during the Ice Age.

“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.

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."

under the direction of A. A. Humphreys by Clarence King.

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 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.

Toward the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, during a time known as the Late Cretaceous, a new type of giant predator appeared along the southern coasts of North America. It was a huge species of crocodylian and is called Deinosuchus. Neither a crocodile nor an alligator, it was an ancestor of both modern groups, but it reached weights of many tons and it had some features unique to the species. Average-sized individuals were bigger than the carnivorous dinosaurs with which they cohabited; the largest specimens were the size of a T-rex.;This is the biography of these giant beasts, including the long history of their discovery, research about their makeup, and the first published evidence about their prey. Generations of people have stared at the 6-foot reconstructed skull at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, not realising that the only real bones in the specimen were bits of snout and lower jaw. New fossils and research show that the actual animal was quite different from the reconstruction, and now we can reliably assemble the skull and the remainder of the animal.;The book also deals with the ancient life and geology of the coastal areas where Deinosuchus thrived, in

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.

"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.

..". 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."

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.

A survey of representative trilobite species from North America. It includes meticulous line drawings of 42 species, with information for each concerning classification, geologic range, and geographical distribution. Descriptions of probable life style, similar species, interesting features, etc. are also given. The 8 page, illustrated Introduction includes discussions of trilobite anatomy, growth, vision, lifestyles, locomotion, feeding, classification, and extinction. A brief "suggested reading" list is also offered.

Our closest living relatives are the chimpanzee and bonobo. We share many characteristics with them, but our lineages diverged millions of years ago. Who in fact was our last common ancestor? Bringing together ecology, evolution, genetics, anatomy and geology, this book provides a new perspective on human evolution. What can fossil apes tell us about the origins of human evolution? Did the last common ancestor of apes and humans live in trees or on the ground? What did it eat, and how did it survive in a world full of large predators? Did it look anything like living apes? Andrews addresses these questions and more to reconstruct the common ancestor and its habitat. Synthesising thirty-five years of work on both ancient environments and fossil and modern ape anatomy, this book provides unique new insights into the evolutionary processes that led to the origins of the human lineage.