Prehistoric Life: The Rise of the Vertebrates

by David Norman

A beautifully illustrated tracing of the evolution of life from the earliest organisms to the advent of the human race clearly explains the important concepts behind evolution, showing how environmental factors influenced its course.

Genres: Science

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

David Bruce Norman is a British paleontologist, currently the main curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge University. From 1991 to 2011, Norman has also been the Sedgwick Museum's director.

There is more than one author with this name.

Reviews

[John Tarttelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and fascinating overview of evolution and the development of life on our planet. The author starts at the very beginning with the Big Bang and goes through every geological epoch to the present day - or 1994 to be precise, when this book was first published. I first read it that very year but it still is very interesting and topical.

David Norman describes the radiation of many and varied dinosaur forms and other less well known groups like the mammal like reptiles that came before them, as well as the hugely successful true mammal group that succeeded them. He deals with the origin of birds - a type of living dinosaur - and that of humans and apes.

Throughout the text is embellished and adorned with the wonderful artwork of John Sibbick, an artist I have long admired. His recreations of Gigantopithecus (the possible origin of the myth of the yeti); of Diatryma a huge predatory bird that fed on the early ancestor of modern horses; and Quetzalcoatlus, a gigantic pterosaur with a wing span of over fifty feet, are a feast for the eyes and a great stir to the imagination.

The great number of latin names of species given in the book might be a little off-putting to some and the coverage of the evolution of humans is a bit patchy and occasionally in error - he states that Neanderthals were "a relatively short-lived and highly specialized race of humans," when in fact they lasted 350,000 years, or three times longer than we homo sapiens had managed thus far, hence the four star rating. But overall, this is a magnificent book which encapsulates a great deal in a modest number of pages.

[John Tarttelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

For everyone from those just interested to experts in the field

An excellent and fascinating overview of evolution and the development of life on our planet. The author starts at the very beginning with the Big Bang and goes through every geological epoch to the present day - or 1994 to be precise, when this book was first published. I first read it that very year but it still is very interesting and topical.

David Norman describes the radiation of many and varied dinosaur forms and other less well known groups like the mammal like reptiles that came before them, as well as the hugely successful true mammal group that succeeded them. He deals with the origin of birds - a type of living dinosaur - and that of humans and apes.

Throughout the text is embellished and adorned with the wonderful artwork of John Sibbick, an artist I have long admired. His recreations of Gigantopithecus (the possible origin of the myth of the yeti); of Diatryma a huge predatory bird that fed on the early ancestor of modern horses; and Quetzalcoatlus, a gigantic pterosaur with a wing span of over fifty feet, are a feast for the eyes and a great stir to the imagination.

The great number of latin names of species given in the book might be a little off-putting to some and the coverage of the evolution of humans is a bit patchy and occasionally in error - he states that Neanderthals were "a relatively short-lived and highly specialized race of humans," when in fact they lasted 350,000 years, or three times longer than we homo sapiens had managed thus far, hence the four star rating. But overall, this is a magnificent book which encapsulates a great deal in a modest number of pages.