As the need increases for sound estimates of impending rates of animal and plant species extinction, scientists must have a firm grounding in the qualitative and quantitative methods required to make the best possible predictions. Extinction Rates offers the most wide-ranging and practical introduction to those methods available. With contributions from an international cast of leading experts, the book combines cutting-edge information on recent and past extinction rates with treatments of underlying ecological and evolutionary causes. Throughout, it highlights apparent differences in extinction rates among taxonomic groups and places, aiming to identify unresolved issues and important questions. Written with advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mind, Extinction Rates will also prove invaluable to researchers in ecology, conservation biology, and the earth and environmental sciences.

This overview of dinosaur discoveries in Mexico synthesizes current information about the geography and environment of the region during the Mesozoic when it was the western margin of the ancient continent of Pangea. The book summarizes research on various groups, including turtles, lepidosauromorphs, plesiosaurs, crocodyliforms, pterosaurs, and last but not least, dinosaurs. In addition, chapters focus on trackways and other trace fossils and on K/P boundary (the Chicxulub crater, beneath the Gulf of Mexico, has been hypothesized as the site of the boloid impact that killed off the dinosaurs). Dinosaurs and Other Reptiles from the Mesozoic of Mexico is an up-to-date, informative volume on an area that has not been comprehensively described until now.

In recent years archaeologists and paleontologists have become increasingly interested in how and why vertebrate animal remains become, or do not become, fossils. Vertebrate Taphonomy introduces interested researchers to the wealth of analytical techniques developed by archaeologists and paleontologists to help them understand why prehistoric animal remains do or do not preserve, and why those that preserve appear the way they do. This book is comprehensive in scope, and will serve as an important work of reference for years to come.