CARROLL:VERTEBRATE PALE. CARROLL, VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

by Robert Lynn Carroll

"Carroll has to his credit an immense amount of useful labour in writing the book and will probably corner the market for a vertebrate paleontology text for the rest of this century." Nature

Genres: Science, Palaeontology, Biology, Dinosaurs, Evolution

698 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1987

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very big and heavy, very technical, and very very richly illustrated with skeletons and parts of skeletons and more skeletons. Did I say heavy? I read but a portion of this very long textbook, but the portion is one of particular interest to me: the Triassic Period, during which the bird lineage and the beast (mammal) lineage first duked it out. The result was the dominance of the bird ancestors (AKA dinosaurs), though contrary to the popular narrative the mammal ancestors did quite well, just not as charismatic megafauna. Most current specialists, as well as this biologist, believe that the dinosaur dominance ended only because of a big fat asteroid, but the asteroid theory was not yet prevalent at the time of writing, 1988. This was also a time when the contemporary cladistic way of thinking and talking had not yet completely taken over phylogenetic discourse, and so the language and method of the book has an archaic feel to it. Another archaism is the reluctance to conclude that dinosaurs were warm-blooded in a modern avian or mammalian sense. Most problematic for a non-specialist like this reader, the extremely detailed arguments based on technical terms of skeletal anatomy were overwhelming and ultimately unproductive. On the other hand, the skeletons visually show, without the jargon, many of the affinities and differences between different clades of Triassic land vertebrates, whether bird or beast or something else. So this child-like reader was able to learn much by approaching this as a children's picture book.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The test we used for our paleo class in college... great textbook.

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully illustrated and COMPREHENSIVE. However, at twenty years old, it really shows its age. Please give us a new edition!

[دين أكل عليه الدهر و شرب]

كتاب رائع يركز علي تطور الفقريات (Vertebrate) - فيبدا بعرض الاسماك ثم كيفيه تطور الفك ثم الرئه ثم كيف انبثق من الاسماك كائن يعيش علي اليابسه - ثم السلاحف و التماسيح ثم الديناصورات..و كل هذا مرفق بصور الحفريات التي توصلوا منها الي هذه النتائج. الكتاب طبع مره واحده فقط عام ١٩٩٠ - هناك كتب اخري احدث و لكني افضل هذا لغزاره معلوماته