Amazon.com

The earth is not the spring chicken it was 4.6 billion years ago. With the passing of the millennia, earth's face, weathered by heat and ice and subject to tectonic friction, has erupted, wrinkled, and sagged, as do all our faces ultimately, only more so. Continents have shifted, merged, and split apart. Seas have turned to land and land has been submerged by seas. And microorganisms have evolved into the vast diversity of flora and fauna that exists today. Douglas Palmer's Atlas is a digest of what is known so far about the history of the earth, enhanced with brilliant maps, photographs, and illustrations, and explained in lucid, enjoyable prose.

The Atlas starts off with "The Changing Globe," 36 beautiful pages of maps that chart the changing face of the earth from Vendian Times some 620 million years ago, when land was massed in two continents called Northern and Southern Gondwana. Flipping through the vivid pages, one sees how Siberia, during Early Cambrian Times, began to move north from its South Pole location, how in Odovician Times (460 million years ago) the Iapetus Ocean was beginning to close while the Rheic Ocean was starting to open, and how a volcano in what's now Virginia spewed volcanic ash as far away as what's now Minnesota, while in Carboniferous Times (a mere 354 million years ago), there were swampy forests in Nova Scotia that are the coal fields of today.

"Ancient Worlds," the next section of the atlas, charts life, from the aquatic microbes formed 3.5 billion years ago and the multicelled organisms of the Vendian Period, the early-Cambrian brachiopods and the Silurian spiny trilobites, on through to the Jurassic and Cretaceous dinosaurs, the Tertiary mammals, and the entrance of hominids just 5 million years ago. The extinction of the dinosaurs is explained, the Ice Age is described, and, in the "Earth Fact File," 200 years of scientific discovery are chronicled.

Douglas Palmer, a professor of natural and earth sciences at Cambridge University, also writes science articles for Science and New Scientist, and is the author of many books on paleontology. His Atlas is an excellent layperson's reference for families and students, rendering a vast amount of history and science in a highly accessible, entertaining format. --Stephanie Gold ... Read more

Reviews (10)

Excellent informative reference!
This exemplary book is one of the few that provides detailed maps of the changes in the Earth's landmasses as well as chronicling the evolution of its life-forms. The opening section includes 36 pages of full-color, chronologically arranged maps. Outlines of current continents overlay those of the prehistoric landmasses, allowing readers to see how they have moved and changed over time. Commentary on individual maps and information on how to read them is included. The second section examines each geological era and time period, and includes many color photographs, reproductions, and drawings depicting their life-forms and habitats. Detailed captions and sidebars provide additional information. The final section, illustrated with black-and-white photos, reproductions, and maps, covers "Earth History," "Earth Processes" (including volcanoes), and "Fossils." Paragraph-length biographies of noted paleontologists and geologists, and a list of museums and Web sites to visit are appended. For its price, this is the best atlas of Laurentia and Gondwana around.

Atlas of the Prehistoric World
Atlas of the Prehistoric World written by Douglas Palmer is a Discovery Channel book that is colorfully, highly illustrated book that takes us on a short 4.6 billion year tour of the earth and is life forms. From the earliest time when the earth had nothing on it to today where man is the dominant species living.

Reading this book you'll find out how mountain ranges form, how volcaoes erupt, how the continents splits apart, how meteorites crashed into the earth and how life was affected. There is a lot of information inside these pages and it is easily assimilated.

The book is divided into three major sections making each time period distinctive in its own right. First is "The Changing Globe" where we see how the earth changed throughout time. The shifting topography is highly illustrative as we see the geology change with time. Taking us from Vendian Times to the Quaternary Times though all times with colorful computer generated snapshots.

Next the section of "Ancient Worlds" takes us from Aquatic Microbes: Life begins to the end of the ice age. This is where you'll find out about not only dinosaurs but early mammals to humans. The next section is the "Earth Fact File" where you'll find out how the people who look into the past find and get their information about the past and bring it to life for us to read about.

This book has some excellent short biographies of the people in history who started putting this information together, also there is a listing of websites to visit, making this book a good sourse for futher information. There is a further reading list so you can extend your reading about the information in this book and of course there is a glossary that explains the terminology used within the text of the book.

This is an excellent book to learn about earth's past and it is worthy of your reference library.

Excellent informative reference
This book has it all: the physical history of the earth as the continents moved about the planet and the evolution of life (the rise and fall of all sorts of species of animals). It's up to date and has copious (and beautiful) illustrations and diagrams.

Geology and palentology buffs will enjoy owning it.

An unparalleled view into deep time
For anyone with an interest in paleontology, this book is very good. For anyone with an interest in paleogeography, the book is indispensible and a treasure.
The 50 pages of maps, while assuredly based in some part on learned conjecture, provide an unmatchable sense of the history of drifting continents and where these may have been located at various points in deep time. For example, one can view the formations in the Colorado Plateau, and read innumerable treatises on them, but only when this book illustrates where North America was during the Triassic and Jurassic periods does the arrangement and appearance of rock beds in such places as Zion and Capitol Reef National Parks make easy sense. Even absent any other reason, if you are reading this review, you owe it to yourself to buy this book.

Quite good, but...
I had my doubts about this book when I received it. It seemed to
be a child's book. However, reading it my first impression quicly went away. Its colourfulness makes it a good, amusing reading; the good paleo-art is combined with good scientific standards, and I learned a lot from it.
There are two things that I would like to suggest for a later edition:
1 ) I would like to see some taxonomic trees. That would help me to understand a few things that weren't clear from reading the book. For instance, did the synapsids evolve from reptiles, or were they never reptiles, and evolved directly from aphibian ancestry? Perhaps some explanation on the cladistics studies that have been made is in order.
I think the taxonomic trees would make relationships between the different families and animals clearer. And I would appreciate trees not centered on mammals, but showing these on par with all the other big divisions that evolved from the amphibians, like the lizards, birds, turtles, etc (some of which we group under that ill-defined label of "Reptiles").
2 ) My other complaint has to do with precisely this human self-centrism: did the fish stoped evolving after the Devonian? I understand that the book needs some sort of direction, but I think the formula "first microbes" -> "us " (which this book has to some point evaded) is a tired one, and forgets too many branches, and perhaps the most important, of life's evolution. For instance, I would like to see a few pages on the evolution of plants, which had a major influence on the evolution of animals (where would we be without that great invention, the tree?).
But I agree that space in this book is limited, and its intended readership wide, so given that, I think a good compromise was reached, with the exception of the taxonomic trees. ... Read more

Book Description

Amber has captured the human imagination for centuries, as amulets, ritual cups, and beads dating back 10,000 years attest. It is a fascinating substance, one that offers a unique intersection of the fields of paleontology, botany, entomology, and mineralogy. The fossilized resin of ancient trees, amber preserves organic material-most commonly insects and other invertebrates-and with it the shape and surface detail that are usually obliterated or hopelessly distorted during the mineralization we associate with fossils. To look at an ant or a bee caught in amber is to look not at an organism that has been turned to stone, but at the actual remains of an insect that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, remains that retain an uncanny semblance of life. Amber also offers clues to the evolution of certain behaviors, capturing such interactions as parasitism-a fruit fly with a parasitic mite still attached to it-or mutualism-a bubble of gas indicating the presence of beneficial bacteria in the gut of a termite. Unique to this book are identification keys to the most common insect inclusions as well as practical advice on how to identify all-too-common fakes. Amber will bring the study of this and its inclusions within reach of anyone with access to amber and a good magnifying glass. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A book for Amber Inclusion Fans
This is only a small book of 73 pages. It gives you a concise and well written account of how amber was formed and where in the world it is found. The Baltic area is one of the more prolific locations, but it is also found in places like Dominica and Burma. It also provides information on fakes and how to test amber, with practical instructions on how to do so.

The book is full of beautiful, clear photographs. However the emphasis is heavily on amber inclusions such as insect and plant life. If you have amber and you want to identify the insect/plant in it, then this is the book you want. It's overall content has obviously been heavily influenced by the movie "Jurassic Park".

However, despite these good points it does have some significant weakness'. It gives little information on the colour ranges available in amber. Some sort of colour chart would have been useful. It also does not supply information on the care and storage of amber.

In short, this book is a great introduction to amber and it's inclusions, but does not extend beyond that into amber artwork or some practical areas of amber ownership/maintance.

Great for amature amber lovers
This is a great book if you want to know basics on amber. The further you go through the book, it explains more in detail. Great in depth photos & easy to understand. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. If you like amber, this is the book to buy.

Concise information, beautiful illustrations
I am developing a natural history museum exhibit on amber and I found this book to be the most helpful source of information. This relatively small book abounds with photographs that make the various inclusions found within ambers easy to identify. The concise information is up to date and well suited for those readers without a science background, as well as those with a Ph.D. Compared to the various recent magazine articles and technical journals and books I've read, using this book has been the most efficient use of my time. It also includes a list of further readings and a couple of web sites (one of which has already provided me with important advice for how to protect amber from degrading). I strongly recommend this book. ... Read more

Book Description

Widely praised for its comprehensive coverage and exceptionallyclear writing style, this best-selling exploration of vertebrate life is the only accurate and up-to-date treatment of vertebrates that employs a phylogenetic perspective and focuses on how vertebrates work, integrating ecology, behavior, anatomy, and physiology in an evolutionary context.A new chapter on conservation draws together information about the basic biology of vertebrates and shows how it is essential for biological and regulatory decisions that affect the survival of species. Discussions of anatomy, physiology, and behavior are placed in an evolutionary context, showing readers how animals work and how they got to be the way they are. Contains information about conservation and endangered species status—related to the basic biology of the groups stresses the importance of good biological information for management and legislation. Features a Cladistic perspective which reflects the widespread adoption of phylogenetic systematics (cladistics) as the basis for determining the evolutionary relationships of organisms. Includes emphasis on conservation—Includes the application of basic biological information about organisms in programs of captive husbandry and management of threatened and endangered species.For professionals in the fields of Vertebrate Zoology, Vertebrate Biology Function, as well as Paleontology and Herpetology. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Enthusiastically recommended as a college-level text.
Vertebrate Life would serve as an excellent upper-level college textbook to anyone interested in becoming informed about vertebrates. Professionally, I am a physicist, who after visiting the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Vertebrates, wanted to learn more about the subject. Even after reading Vertebrate Life, I don't think that I could point out the squamate bone on a fossilized skull. On the other hand, with 733 pages, it is unfair to critize this book about a lack of coverage! The authors provide several pages of excellent references at the end of each chapter. So, if I really wanted to be able to identify a squamate bone, I'm sure that I could have found out from one of references. However, I was troubled by a number of typos, some of the them serious. Figure 15-3 appears to have the second half of the figure repeated as the first half. It would have been nice to see missing illustrations. Figure 3-6b identifies the Otic capsule as "Optic capsule" at one point. This confused me for a while. Even with all this, I was fascinated by what I read, and read the entire book, cover to cover, all 733 pages worth. For the serious student of our natural world, I would recommend spending full price for this book, and plan on spending more than a few hours with it. ... Read more

Book Description

Life on earth is now known to be an astonishing four billion years old. Yet as recently as two hundred years or so ago, much of world believed that all life was created in just six days. Over the past two centuries, the testimony of rocks has slowly revealed the Earth's deep prehistory and now scarcely a week passes without an important new discovery adding to our understanding of life's beginning and evolution. Written for a very wide audience, with an approachable text and many photographs and illustrations, Prehistoric Past Revealed tells the story of these discoveries. The book gives an overview history of life on Earth, including the most up-to-date research and discoveries from around the world, as it covers a wide range of fascinating topics--the fossil record, dinosaurs, extinction events, our earliest human ancestors, global environments, climate change--in a highly accessible format.

Using timelines, diagrams, sidebar discussions, and breaking down complex ideas into digestible topics, Palmer shows how it has been possible to recover the story of life from the petrified remains of shells and bones scattered through rock strata. He takes us from the present day gradually back into the "terra incognita" of the deep past with its extinct life forms, tracing human ancestry back by centering his discussion around internationally famous fossil sites. Each site reveals another episode in the history of life, as Palmer tells how the environment and life of the time have been reconstructed from its rocks and fossil remains. As it reveals the inner secrets of the Earth, Prehistoric Past Revealed also shows how these discoveries have irrevocably changed our worldview. ... Read more

Book Description

The natural history museum is a place where the line between ""high"" and ""low"" culture effectively vanishes--where our awe of nature, our taste for the bizarre, and our thirst for knowledge all blend happily together. But as Stephen Asma shows in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, there is more going on in these great institutions than just smart fun. Asma takes us on a wide-ranging tour of natural history museums in New York and Chicago, London and Paris, interviewing curators, scientists, and exhibit designers, and providing a wealth of fascinating observations.We learn how the first museums were little more than high-toned side shows, with such garish exhibits as the pickled head of Catherine the Great's lover. In contrast, today's museums are hot-beds of serious science, funding major research in such fields as anthropology and archaeology. ""Rich in detail, lucid explanation, telling anecdotes, and fascinating characters.... Asma has rendered a fascinating and credible account of how natural history museums are conceived and presented.It's the kind of book that will not only engage a wide and diverse readership, but it should, best of all, send them flocking to see how we look at nature and ourselves in those fabulous legacies of the curiosity cabinet.""--The Boston Herald. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Bizarre and Brilliant!
This is an excellent and provocative book. Asma ranges widely, but also deeply, over the relatively uncharted territory of museum practices and theories --some mainstream and others quirky and idiosyncratic. One of the great virtues of the book is that it consciously avoids the typical postmodern cultural studies lingo that most of the other recent museum books invoke. This is clear and thoughtful analysis of the tradition of natural history collecting --analysis that brings us face to face with oddball curators like Peale and Hunter. But it also connects the older forms of edutainment (early taxidermy, etc.) with the more contemporary and controversial forms (Hollywood-type displays of dinosaurs, etc.). Two other important aspects of the book are scarcely mentioned in the promo blurbs, but they make for fascinating reading. One, is a fresh, if ocassionally dense, tour of European scientific classification theory --a philosophically important and often ignored area. And two, a powerful argument for evolution theory as against creationism and the increasingly popular "intelligent design" theory. Great writing and very intelligent!

The evolution of natural history museums around the world
Stephen Asthma's Stuffed Animals And Pickled Heads surveys the presence and evolution of natural history museums around the world, interviewing curators, scientists and exhibit designers and providing many observations of the history of these museums and how their contents and approaches have evolved. The result is an excellent and intriguing story of the evolution of natural history collections.

Mummies, Museums, and Metaphysics
If you do not want to know the nuts and bolts (or rather, the knives and molds) of the craft of taxidermy, but you want to know about why people might be interested in such an activity, what happens to their exhibits in museums, how museums express cultural and scientific philosophy, and how we come to categorize the biology that fills our world, then Stephen T. Asma's _Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums_ (Oxford University Press) will do nicely. It is an amusing ramble through museums, but since Asma is a professor of philosophy, it veers through much larger ideas.

Asma obviously likes museums, and he has gained entrance to the back rooms denied to other mortals. He is delighted to report his findings, such as the dermestid beetle room at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. These beetles, held in a stinky sealed room that has a door like a submarine hatch, swarm over the skinned bodies of specimens, literally gnawing them to the bone in a couple of days. He has interviewed curators and exhibition designers, and has them explain what they are trying to accomplish in their exhibits. But they may not know; how a display is arranged depends on scientific and social philosophy which varies from time to time and from nation to nation, and may be covert. Louis Agassiz displayed human racial artifacts at Harvard to emphasize that races were different, having been separately and specially created, rather than showing the continuity of human descent. The natural history museum in England have exhibits that emphasize Darwin, but the French hardly mention him. The Americans will have the most modern philosophy of taxonomy.

Comfortable with including Plato, James, Wittgenstein and others from his own field, Asma gives a wide-ranging discussion of epistemological issues that is academic but is never stuffy and never loses its sense of fun. ... Read more

Book Description

The Human Fossil Record series is the most authoritative and comprehensive documentation of the fossil evidence  relevant to the study of our evolutionary past. This second volume covers the craniodental remains from Africa and Asia attributed to the genus Homo. In this monumental and groundbreaking new series, the authors use clearly defined terminology and descriptive protocols that are applied uniformly throughout. Organized alphabetically by site name with detailed morphological descriptions and original, expertly taken photographs, each entry features:

• Location information

• History of discovery

• Previous systematic assessments of the fossils

• Geological, archaeological, and faunal contexts

• Dating

• References to the primary literature ... Read more

Book Description

Biogenesis provides an up-to-date discussion of the origin of life, including experimental strategies, theories, models, and controversies. The book includes an historical overview, from the Greek philosophers to contemporary scientists. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge
Unlike the previous reviewer, I found the copious annotation of the text with references to be the salient (and most valuable) feature of this book. Indeed, the author does *not* make unsupported statements -- he supports them with actual references from the literature!

I do admit being sidetracked a few times by actually going to get some of these items from the library, but they were the things *I* was interested in, and the book would not have been well served by transformation into the weighty tome that inclusion of all these details would have made it.

Good, but keeps referring to other materials
The beginning of the book deals with the historical views on the origin of life (such as the views of Greek philosophers, the debate over spontaneous generation, etc.). This section is very good, but it is probably not what a person would buy the book for. Once he starts discussing current origin-of-life studies, much of the work consists of unsupported statements (the statements are not supported in the book itself, but by other works, which the author provides pointers to. The reader must buy or gain access to the other works in order to get the details). Also, the index is very poor - if you read the book and find something interesting, mark it then and there - don't rely on ever being able to find it again. Still, there is up-to-date information that is missing from many other books on the subject. ... Read more

Book Description

The diminishing population of African and Asian elephants can be compared to the extinction of other elephant-like species, such as mammoths and mastodonts, which occurred more than ten thousand years ago.The purpose of this book is to use the ecology and behavior of modern elephants to create models for reconstructing the life and death of extinct mammoths and mastodonts. The source of the models is a long-term and continuing study of elephants in Zimbabwe, Africa.These models are clearly described with respect to the anatomical, behavioral, and ecological similarities between past and present proboscideans.The implications of these similarities on the life and death of mammoths and mastodonts is explored in detail.The importance of this book is primarily its unifying perspective on living and extinct proboscideans:the fossil record is closely examined and compared to the natural history of surviving elephants.Dr. Haynes's studies of the places where African elephants die (so-called elephant burial grounds) are unique. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A comprehensive study of proboscidean kill sites
Gary Haynes has done marvelous research in the study of known-cause elephant death sites and has used this research to present a very logical comparison to pre-historic proboscidean remains. This book is a "must read" for anyone interested in mammoths and the various extinction theories. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

What killed the dinosaurs? For more than a century, this question has been one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science. But, in 1980, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, Walter, proposed a radical answer: 65 million years ago an asteroid or comet as big as Mt. Everest slammed into the earth, raising a dust cloud vast enough to cause mass extinction. A revolutionary idea that challenged the ice-age extinction theory, the asteroid-impact theory was scorned and derided by the science community. But after years of bitter debate and intense research, an astonishing discovery was made-an immense impact crater in the Yucatn Peninsula that was identified as Ground Zero. The Alvarezes had their proof. A dramatic scientific detective story, Night Comes to the Cretaceous is a brilliant example of science at work-in the trenches, complete with passionate struggles and occasional victories. ... Read more

Reviews (22)

Required reading for every science student!
Powell's book is a scientific detective story that meticulously, exhaustively, and painstakingly lays out his case for why he thinks the dinosaurs got wiped out by a meteorite impact. And Powell makes his case by combining such disciplines as geology, paleontology, chemistry, ecology, astronomy, and biology.

Although many scientists still think the meteor impact theory is "controversial," Powell's diligent research makes his conclusion appear certain. He convinced me!

But scientists are human, too, and Powell's book recounts how some scientists rejected this theory so strenuously that they lost their sense of proportion, particularly geophysicist Charles Officer.

On pages 216-217, Powell asks, "How far will scientists on the losing end of an argument go? They employ a set of stratagems that seem hauntingly familiar; they are the very ploys used by creationists and others who have no platform or logic."

The following examples paraphrase Powell's findings against Charles Officer:

1. Officer's confident assertion: "There IS no evidence for a meteor impact at the KT boundary." 2. His straw men: "Nobody has found big dinosaur piles." 3. His red herrings: "There are similarities between livestock fatalities and dinosaur extinctions." 4. His plea for equal time: "The journal Science published eleven favorable impact articles, but only two against." 5. His blame of the media: "The Earth science community is biased." 6. His impugned motives: "Scientists fabricate theories and evidence." 7. His false alarms: "The meteor impact theory is pathological and dangerous!"

Ironically, Powell says that Officer's tireless efforts to debunk the meteor impact theory forced geologists to vigilantly reinforce their case. And in the end, the earth science community has a lot to thank Charles Officer for.

But the previous Amazon.com reviewer is wrong when he claims that Powell believes all mass extinctions are attributed to extraterrestrial impacts. Powell does, however, point out that we've found approximately 150 terrestrial impact craters all over the globe, and scientists claim to discover between three and five new craters annually. And these don't include impacts that might've struck the oceans.

Also, you only have to look at the surface of every moon and terrestrial planet in our solar system to see that impacts once occurred regularly. And when a three-mile wide chunk of comet Shoemaker Levy 9 struck Jupiter four years ago, it left a massive impact streak as large as the earth itself! And this bolide was only HALF the size of the rock that bore the Chicxulub crater.

Powell only suggests the POSSIBILITY that periodic impacts triggered mass extinctions. And he thinks this premise deserves a fair hearing instead of being rejected outright.

As a combined scientific detective story and riveting historical account, Powell's book is a masterpiece! Every science student should read it.

A fascinating case history of how science really works.
This well-written book provides a complete and interesting account of how a brilliant and insightful father-son team scratched their heads, followed their instincts, and opened up a new window of understanding on the processes that have shaped the geological and biological history of the planet. The science itself is well-conveyed. Even the nonscientist will follow the compelling evidence that a large impact occured 65 million years ago in what is now the Yucatan. An impact of this magnitude would lead to such global devastation of the ecosystem that extinction of most forms of terrestrial life would seem an inevitable outcome. The disappearance of the dinosaurs during this same geological blink of an eye, after a reign of over 150 million years, is not plausibly coincidental.

While the science in the book is fascinating, the work is most significant for the insight that it provides into the process of the scientific enterprise. In art, music, and literature, value is fundamentally a matter of taste. In science, on the other hand, nature has the final say as to the ultimate value of an idea. A "more correct" idea should eventually win out over a "less correct" idea, regardless of the prejudices of the people involved. "Night Comes to the Cretaceous" is a testament to that process. The book tells the tale of how an originally unlikely idea successfully faced the challenges of experiment and observation, and in the process displaced scientific orthodoxy. It also tells the very human story of how honest, healthy skepticism on the part of a number of established scientists gradually became instead the unreasoned and sometimes vindictive attacks of those who had been left behind by the advance of knowledge.

One of the most influential books about the history and philosophy of science is Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." In some ways Powell does the job better, simply by providing a blow by blow account of a current-day scientific revolution centering on one of most compelling and generally accessible scientific questions of our time: "Whatever happened to the dinosaurs?"

Night Comes to the Cretaceous
All in all, James Lawrence Powell did a superb job in writing this book. He is highly opinionated and interprets data in a manner to support his fundamental belief (that an asteroid caused the KT extinctions).
I advise readers to get a balanced view by also reading "The Great Dinosaur Extinction Controvery" by Charles Officer and Jack Page. I felt that Powell covered the topic very thoroughly and provided historical context to help the novice extinctions reader. I felt that the book was very weak in dicussing the paleontological aspects of the extinction. Next revision perhaps.

How Scientific Revolutions Actually Happen
One of the great scientific revolutions of our times has been the recognition that the biological evolution of Earth is influenced random impacts by comets and asteroids. When this concept was put forward in 1980, it was radical; today it is the accepted wisdom in paleontology, geology, and evolutionary biology. Jim Powell tells a fascinating story of the evidence for this transformation and of the scientists who have been protgonists in the struggle to understand this evidence and integrate it into our broader undestanding of our planet. This is one of the best books ever written to trace the history of a scientific controversy and of the people involved, warts and all.

Night Comes to the Cretaceous
Night Comes to the Cretaceous: Dinosaur Extinction and the Transformation of Modern Geology wriiten by James Lawrence Powell is a comprehensive work on the powers of scientific reasoning about what happened to the dinosaurs from the information that is available to us.

There has been a lot of controversy about what reallly happened to the dinosaurs, after all they ruled the earth for 160 million years and then...poof... they are gone. Why did this happen and was the... poof... not so all of a sudden, but over and entended period of time. We do not know for sure, but we have some very interesting information from this book that will shead some light on the matter.

Luis and Walter Alvarez found an interesting clue in the geology of the earth itself. Luis is a Nobel Prize winning physicist and Walter is his son, they found something that would turn the scientific community on its collective ear, that a single random event caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. There is an immense impact crater buried deep in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico that was identified as Ground Zero called Chicxulub or red devil

You see what the Alvarez's found was an Iridium layer in the rocks and soil core samples, why would that be so interesting, well, iridium mainly comes from extraterrestrial sources as it is not found in abundance on earth. This iridium layer is found all around the earth at the K-T layer (Cretaceous-Tertiary) at about the right geological time 65 million years ago.

Reading this book will fill in a lot of details as it is a masterful work in scientific reasoning. I found it to be a very educational, entertaining read. ... Read more

Book Description

While the inhabitants of the lost world have long held sway over our imaginations, in recent years dinosaur science has experienced an explosive growth. More books on dinosaurs have been published in the past decade than in all the previous 150 years since Richard Owen named these "fearfully great lizards," and dinosaur research continues to make headlines. Reporting the latest discoveries and research, this book is an exuberant celebration of dinosaurs and of our ongoing fascination with them. Here, in one volume, is the single, most-authoritative account of dinosaur paleontology for the general reader, illustrated with 350 drawings and black-and-white photos and 16 pages of color plates.

More than 350 illustrations, including 16 pages in full colorEach chapter written by an expert in dinosaur studiesIncludes the latest dinosaur discoveriesNew information on the warm-blooded/cold-blooded debateNew insights on the possibility of isolating dinosaur DNAWhat dinosaurs ate--and how we know about itDinosaurs in the mediaA time-line of the history of dinosaur scienceAnd much, much more! ... Read more

Reviews (7)

The Complete Dinosaur
The Complete Dinosaur edited by James O. Farlow and M.K. Brett-Surman is a comprehensive book about dinosaurs. There are many contributors that have written chapter for this book, so you get different writing styles and information is duplicated at times.

This book is divided into six parts and each has chapters written by the various contributors. The parts are as follows:
Part One: The Discovery of Dinosaurs
Part Two: The Study of Dinosaurs
Part Three: The Groups of Dinosaurs
Part Four: Biology of the Dinosaurs
Part Five: Dinosaur Evolution in the Changing World of the Meszoic Era
Part Six: Dinosaurs and the Media

What I found that was very interesting was that at the end of each chapter there was extensive references. So, if you find something that piques your interest you have something else to read about, to either clarify or strengthen your viewpoint. Also, this makes the book easy to use when dealing with technical material.

This book summarizes the current knowledge about dinosaurs at the time written (1997), and currently there are only eighty professional dinosaur paleotologists in the world. This book is written like professional scientific literature, but that doesn't make it difficult to read. Reading on you will find this book is not without controversy, as vigorus disagreements among the specialists over topics of contention will be found here as they hash out these sharp divergences of opinion.

I must say, that there is some very fine artwork, with bone of skeletons, muscle structure and complete complete fleshed out dinosaurs giving the reader a full grasp of what a dinosar looks like from the inside out. Also, questions as to what dinosaurs ate, how they raised their young, and the question that was the turning point that made the movie Jurassic Park... can we isolate dinosaur DNA are just some of the many questions that have answers in this book.

All in all, the technical jargon is at a minimum and there is a glossary of terms making your reading much more fruitful. I found the narrative easy to read and the information from this book to be exceptional.

Inconstant but really great
This book is very dense and covers almost anything related to dinosaurs. It is clearly intended to non-pros but it does not lack scientifical value. However, because the book was written by many authors you'll find some chapters less well written than others and some information is duplicated. My advise is to not hesitate to buy this as your first dinosaur book.

Definitive dinosaur bible...for now...
Faced with all the problems of trying to make science interesting to kids, there is, nor will there ever be anything quite so universally exciting as dinosaurs. But like any field of research, the outsider must suffer from being just that--an outsider. Without prior knowledge of the subject area one can easily fill their heads with outdated or only periphrial knowledge. What one needs is a good (up to date and user-friendly) source book, and The Complete Dinosaurs is without doubt one of the primier resources for both the outsider and insider on these ancient reptiles.

Although content will require some basic knowledge of biology (and you will find refresher material here as well--remember all your bones?), the chapters are for the most part always interesting, and some reflect the unquestionable enthusiasm of the authors. One particular chapter on the use of multimedia in cataloging and exchanging dinosaur data, while seemingly irrelevant to folks who just want to know the name of a dinosaur, spoke volumes of dedication and commitment to moving dinosaur finds from museum closets into scientists hands around the world. This level of enthusiasm does not diminish through the book, making what would otherwise be a very heavy read into something of a treat.

There are two or three other dinosaur books that may be as definitive as this one, however from paging through 'The Dinosauria' and 'The Dinosaur Encyclopedia', Farlow's books seemed the most approachable/accessible, while also not shorting the reader on content.

While this and the other dinosaur books mentioned might be a bit challenging at times for readers who don't have a background in biology, geology, paleontology, etc. (IE there is a lot of prior knowledge about evolutionary theory that the reader is assumed to possess), I would still not hestitate to recommend it to someone with a passion for Dinosaurs...which should be about everyone by now, right?

Brett-Surman Rules
Michael Brett-Surman and James Farlow shine in this wonderful book about dinosaurs. All serious dinosaur fans will love it!

A great book!
A must have for profesionals working in this field and for dinosaur lovers. It treats every aspect concerning dinosaurs in a way that it is understandable for both experts and common people without losing credibility. It has an excellent price for a book with all this information. ... Read more

Book Description

Have you ever wondered what it's really like to dig for dinosaur bones on Alaska's North Slope?To excavate cave fossils high in the mountains of Colorado?To hunt for trilobites in the Utah desert?To collect fossil urchins from cliffs on Australia's seashore?

These and many more adventures await you in the pages of this book.From Ontario to Argentina to Wyoming, you'll screen for microfossils from anthills, excavate bones large and small, and collect beautiful invertebrate and plant fossils.By the time you finish reading these tales, you'll feel like you've been there yourself! ... Read more

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Field Adventures is captivating and easy to read!
Field Adventures in Paleontology is one of the most riveting books on paleontology I have ever read.It is well-written and could be understood by anyone from a high school student to a seasoned scientist.For once, someone has written a book about what it is like to do paleontological excavation work that doesn't require you to have a PhD. and university funding!The digs in this book are accessible to everyone, even amateurs like me.Besides having lots of good photos and science, it opened my eyes to how to go about joining a fossil dig--something I've always wanted to do.Every student and amateur should read this book! ... Read more

Book Description

This book presents current knowledge of the early vertebrates--mainly fish, but including some terrestrial creatures--which lived about 250 to 470 million years ago.The work focuses on anatomical and phylogenetic questions, but includes information on fossil discovery and preparation, as well as the analysis of the characteristics from which their relationships may be reconstructed.The author addresses both new and old problems in the evolution of certain anatomical details and deals briefly with the animals' way of life, extinction, and former distribution.The book is the first in its field to use a cladistic approach. For each major vertebrate group, the reader will find a diagram of relationships, or cladogram, with a selection of characters at each node, and a succinct phylogenetic classification. ... Read more

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The first vertebrates
Although this reference is a very detailed treatise on early vertebrate fossils, it may prove useful to the general reader trying to make sense of early vertebrate evolution because it does not reproduce photographs of the early fossils, but instead takes artistic license to illustrate them in reconstructed forms. The earliest known fossil vertebrate is Sacabambaspis/Arandaspis found in Bolivia/Australia and 470 million years old - head armor, jawless, mouth containing bony parts for scraping the seabottom, lateral eyes, two pineal eyes, gill openings, and only a median and caudal fins. At the end of Ordovician there was a period of glaciation, and then afterwards in the early Silurian there is a large appearance of both jawless and jawed fossil vertebrates - heterostracans (cephalaspids), galeaspids, thelodonts, acanthodians, shark relatives (chondrichthyans), placoderms (jawed & armored), and possibly bony fishes (osteichthyans). In the mid-Silurian tectonic plate movement created mountain ranges that subsequently eroded what became a red sandstone in many areas that were favorable to vertebrate life. In the Devonian fossils are found showing fish evolving into groups that would survive to the present, as well as tetrapods. In the Carboniferous it is found that the cartilaginous fishes and the ray-finned fishes greatly diversify, as well ferns and club-mosses are found around bays and lakes. After the Permian ended, the 'modern' vertebrate world appears in the Triassic and Jurassic - sharks, teleosts, modern amphibians, modern reptiles, birds and mammals. Lampreys, hagfishes, chimaeras, some ray-finned fish, coelacanths and lungfishes survive relatively unchanged from the emergence of the vertebrates in the Late Palaeozoic. The early vertebrate fossils, along with comparisons of extant vertebrates, are considered in detail. Origins of the vertebrate head and the tetrapod limb are then considered, followed by broader topics in evolution. ... Read more

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It's as advertised -- and exhaustive and exhausting
"Ecosystems" is 500+ pages, and could easily be expanded to ten times that. This is the first book I found to discuss all major life-bearing periods from an ecological standpoint.

Minor nits: I wish at least a couple of periods had been treated in depth. The writing could be a bit crisper. And as a layman, I would have appreciated a glossary for some of the words that don't show up in my Webster's Unabridged. ... Read more

Book Description

Following the prototype established by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, Jashemski and the volume's contributors reconstruct the environment of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the surrounding Campanian countryside, based on the evidence preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.The volume brings together the work of geologists, soil specialists, paleobotanists, botanists, paleontologists, biologists, chemists, dendrochronologists, ichthyologists, zoologists, ornithologists, mammalologists, herpetologists, entymologists, and archaeologists, providing a complete picture of the landscape, flora, and fauna of the ancient sites. ... Read more

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Great Overview of Natural History
Jashemski has worked for many years in Pompeii's gardens - and produced many publications.This volume not only brings together a summary of all of her work, it is complemented by robust ancilliary studies from experts in paleosols, pollen and fauna.Beautiful pictures, well-referenced - an academic book that also is of interest to other readers.THE must have of all Pompeii publications in recent times. ... Read more

Book Description

Charles Hapgood's rare book, Mystery in Acambaro, is back in print! Hapgood researched the Acambaro collection of clay figurines with Erle Stanley Gardner (author of the Perry Mason mysteries) in the mid-1960s. The Acambaro collection comprises hundreds of clay figurines that are apparently thousands of years old; however, they depict such bizarre animals and scenes that most archaeologists dismiss them as an elaborate hoax. The collection shows humans interacting with dinosaurs and various other "monsters" such as horned men. Both Hapgood and Gardner were convinced that the figurines from Acambaro were authentic ancient artifacts which indicated that men and dinosaurs had cohabited together in the recent past, and that dinosaurs had not become extinct many millions of years ago as is commonly thought. David Hatcher Childress writes a lengthy introduction concerning Acambaro, the latest testing and other evidence of "living" dinosaurs. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

One word: Flintstones
The authors rely quite a bit on pictures drawn by an ancient culture, and not enough on physical evidence. If a future civilization were to discover a picture of the Flintstones, with both human and dinosaur characters, a similar book might be written claiming that dinosaurs lived in our time.

Mystery in Acambaro
Not what I expected. I was able to finish it in 2 hours. I really thought that more evidence would be presented to build a strong case for modern day dinosaurs.

Challenging, controvsersial, thought-provoking reading.
Mystery In Acambaro is a detailed and illustrated account of an unusual collection of ceramic figures discovered and assembled by the late Waldemar Julsrud in Acambaro, Mexico. If authentic, some of the figures would seem to indicate that dinosaurs survived in that part of the world into fairly recent times. This clay figures depict bizarre animals and scenes that don't fit neatly into traditional archaeology and paleontology theory, and therefore have been sumarily dismissed by mainstream scholarship as an elaborate hoax. But both Hapgood and Earle Stanley Gardner were convinced that the Acambaro figures were authentic artifacts, with very important implications for our understanding of dinosaurs and Central American human history. Highly recommended, challenging, controversial, very thought provoking reading.

Hapgood's long out of print book is now available
We owe David Hatcher Childress a huge vote of thanks for reprinting Hapgood's long out of print study of one of the most curious archaeological mysteries of the last century. Sometime in the late 1940s, Waldemar Julsrud, a German living in the small Mexican town of Acambaro, stumbled upon a strange clay figurine protruding from the earth. Within days, a barrow-load of similar clay sculptures was delivered to him by a man who was recovering dozens of them from the excavation of his basement nearby. Subsequent testing suggests they were made between 3,500-6,400 years before the present but correspond to no known ancient culture. This heresy is made worse by the strangeness of the figures, many showing humans co-existing with huge lizards and Godzilla-like dinosaurs. The establishment has shunned the case, but it deserves to be better studied. The story might never have become known if the case had not been investigated by Hapgood (author of Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings) and crime-writer Earle Stanley Gardner. The original pamphlet is only about 20 pages; half the rest are old (rather poor) photos of the enigmatic sculptures and half is a long essay by Childress reviewing evidence of dinosaur survival into the era of modern man.

Not Quite What Was Expected
As mentioned in the title, this book was not quite what was expected. The introduction by Childress was equivalent in length to Hapgood's portion, and contained little new information. It also contained some misinformation about the Zuiyo-maru carcass.

As for Hapgood's portion, a more complete analysis of the mystery figures was expected. The presentation was quite generic with few specific examples of the reasoning behind his belief thst dinosaurs survived until recently. ... Read more

Book Description

Most nonscientists are usually aware of fossils, and it is commonly believed that they are extremely rare. In fact, fossils are exceptionally common in many sedimentary rocks and are used extensively in geology for age dating, interpretation of ancient environments, and the discovery of natural resources. However, there is another type of fossil deposit that is truly rare. These rare fossil deposits, called Lagerstätten, preserve the remains of the soft tissues or the articulated skeletal remains of ancient creatures in truly astonishing fine detail. Some of these deposits are world-famous, such as the Burgess Shale, or Solnhofen but there are others dating from many different geological eras from the Paleozoic, up to the Eocene. Recently, a concerted effort has been made to understand the overall significance of these rare fossil deposits. Whereas in the past these deposits were considered novelties, modern researchers are trying to understand what they can tell us about ancient life and environments. New sophisticated techniques (including image and geochemical analyses) are providing enormous new contributions to our knowledge of Lagerstätten sites and to paleobiology in general.

This volume describes many of the most famous Lagerstätten locations worldwide and is complete with over 70 superb halftones showing some of these exotic fossils in all their glory. Paleontologists are beginning to understand why such deposits occur, how they have varied since the advent of marine metazoan life, and how their presence impacts our understanding of the evolution of life in the Earth's oceans. In this way, the study of Lagerstätten continues to move towards the mainstream of paleobiological, biological, and geological research, and away from its former status as the examination of mere curiosities.

All those interested in these beautiful and sometimes enigmatic deposits will want to own this book. ... Read more

Book Description

Offering the most comprehensive and up-to-date review of fossil footprints, for both dinosaurs and other vertebrates, in the western United States,covers the fossil record from the Paleozoic through the Cenozoic era. A series of illustrations depict dinosaurs in the their natural habitat, and an appendix lists museums and other major repositories of tracks and replicas, and gives details on tracksites open to the public. Includes annotated references and detailed descriptions of important specimens, describing how these trackways can help interpret behavior. ... Read more

Book Description

The horned dinosaurs, a group of rhinoceros-like creatures that lived 100 to 65 million years ago, included one of the greatest and most popular dinosaurs studied today: Triceratops. Noted for his flamboyant appearance--marked by a striking array of horns over the nose and eyes, a long bony frill at the back of the head, and an assortment of lumps and bumps for attracting females--this herbivore displayed remarkable strength in its ability to fight off Tyrannosaurus rex. It was also among the last dinosaurs to walk the earth. In telling us about Triceratops and its relatives, the Ceratopsia, Peter Dodson here re-creates the sense of adventure enjoyed by so many scientists who have studied them since their discovery in the mid-nineteenth century. From the badlands of the Red Deer River in Alberta to the Gobi Desert, Dodson pieces together fossil evidence to describe the ceratopsians themselves--their anatomy, biology, and geography--and he evokes the human dimension of their discovery and interpretation. An authoritative survey filled with many original illustrations, this book is the first comprehensive presentation of horned dinosaurs for the general reader.

Dodson explains first the fascinating ways in which the ceratopsians dealt with their dangerous environment. There follows a lesson on ceratopsian bone structure, which enables the reader quickly to grasp the questions that still puzzle scientists, concerning features such as posture, gait, footprints, and diet. Dodson evenhandedly discusses controversies that continue, for example, over sexual dimorphism and the causes of the dinosaurs' disappearance. Throughout his narrative, we are reminded that dinosaur study is a human enterprise. We meet the scientists who charmed New York high society into financing expeditions to Mongolia, home of Triceratops' predecessors, as well as those who used their poker winnings to sustain paleontology expeditions. Rich in fossil lore and in tales of adventure, the world of the Ceratopsia is presented here for specialists and general readers alike. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

The Horned Dinosaurs
The Horned Dinosaurs written by Peter Dodsonis a book that concerns itself strictly to a group of dinosauria known as the Ceratopsia of which Triceatops is but one of many.

The book is comprehensive in nature and has many illustrations scattered throughout to help the reader, as the author pieces together the fossil evidence. As a child many of us dreamed of dinosaurs and even had toys fashioned after dinosaurs, but the author has actually found and is studing the dinosaurs for real.

Triceratops was one of my favorites as a child. It could take on a T.rex and win with its three long horns, one on the nose and two horns on the brow and a crown of bone like a halo arond the head. Well, after reading this book, there are many different horn combinations and number of horns in the group of dinosaurs names Ceratopsia. Five horns, long and short horns, different crown arrangements, all were dangerous. Following the book you'll find out that the environment was dangerous and the Ceratopsia evolved with the level of dangers so did the bone structure.

Puzzles present themselves as fossil remains of a once very proud group of dinosaurs. The author explains some of them as posture, gait and compares them with the fossil record, footprints, but I'm not convinced that the author is correct. This book takes us all over the world where dinosaur digs are found, Mongolia, Alberta, Canada. The adventure in this book is trying to figure out after the discovery what these animals were like.

Clues range from not only the impressive armor in the skulls, but the actual deconstruction of the skeletal remains to nests/eggs and diet and tooth structure. All in all, this book is presented for general readers and specialists, but with the easy going narrative its not hard to be engrossed in this book.

A good book, but needs some work.
Ceratopsians, or horned dinosaurs, have always been of particular interest to me. This book is a wealth of info about the group. It breaks the group into two distinct sub-groups: centrosaurs and chasmosaurs. These groups were informally called short-frilled and long-frilled ceratopsians. Centrosaurs are characterized by large nasal horns and small or nonexistant brow horns while chasmosaurs are characterized by short nasal horns and longer brow horns. This means that Triceratops, which I can remember being classified in the short-frilled group correctly belongs in the chasmosaur group. The book also explains work being done on statistical analysis of the known finds with an eye to determining which species are valid and which are just individual variation. However, in many instances I was left uncertain about which species were kept and which were incorporated into the remaining species.
In addition to the physiological and evolutionary material, the author includes a good deal of information on how and when the species were discovered. He uses this to set the stage for the analysis work which is the meat of his book.
There was one major problem I had with the book. That is the conclusion he draws that ceratopsians had front legs that were splayed out to the side, much like an alligator's. This is a debate that has gone on for some time. In my opinion, an animal that has splayed out front legs and fully erect rear legs could not exist. One only has to look at living animals to see that there is no animal with legs like that and no other animal in the fossil record has legs like this either. The only animals I know of that have limbs that are set up for different methods of locomotion are birds. And no one is suggesting that ceratopsians flew.
All in all a solid book, but his conclusions could have been more clearly stated.

Wonderful things with horns!
Dodson's prose is a delight. One rarely finds a scientist who is also a good writer, capable of conveying the complex ideas of geology and biology (as well as history) in a manner that is both informative and exquisitely entertaining. No dry text here. THE HORNED DINOSAURS provides an up-to-date survey of the known ceratopsians, from familiar taxa like Triceratops and Chasmosaurus, to newer, less well-known forms such as Udanoceratops and Einiosaurus. Wayne D. Barlowe provides a series of beautiful color plates. It's a shame similar volumes are not available for other groups of dinosaurs, such as hadrosaurs and ankylosaurs, books useful to both laymen and paleontologists.

Triceratops and family, with wonderful color plates.
Triceratops and family, as related by Penn paleontologist Peter Dodson, who is a clear and engaging writer. Have a look at the cover-scan at Amazon -- a preview of Wayne Barlowe's wonderful color plates. I bogged down in the anatomy lessons -- the occipital condyle dimensions seem important, but MEGO. The interior art is very nice. And I really like such tidbits as learning that William Buckland, who wrote the first formal dinosaur fossil-description in 1824, kept a pet bear in his house at Oxford. So there may be more here about old horned-face than you want to know, but you owe it to yourself, at least, to look at the wonderful Barlowe plates and read about the fieldwork. For a dino-dilettante like myself, the highlights of dino-books are the color plates, and I would certainly buy a nice, big "best-of" color dino-book. My nominations for artists would include Wayne Barlowe, Carel van Kampen (Dinosaurs of Utah), Doug Henderson (Dawn of the Dinosaurs), and others. If such a book exists, I haven't seen it. Have you? Publishers, take note....

Peter Dodson Soars Again
Peter Dodson has always been known as an influential paleontologist. In paleontology circles, not many are more respected than Dodson. In his many books Dodson has shown his knowledge and expertise, and this one soars above the rest. Five stars to the All American Paleontologist Peter Dodson. And, the cover of this work has even been transformed to be my wallpaper on my PC. Bravo!! ... Read more