[.ca] Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution (ISBN 0716718227)

One of the few college texybooks I kept.:
This book was my textbook for Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution at the University of Rochester back in 1992. The book is very daunting to look at if you just flip through it. However, it does a nice job of introducing concepts and terms to the reader. Its organization is straightforward, starting with the simplest vertebrates and eventually finishing with mammals. Most groups are covered well, considering that the author's cover every group of vertebrates known. The biggest problem I had with the book was the section on dinosaurs, the biggest reason why I took the class. The information on them was limited to a few pages and much of the information was out-dated even in 1992. However, if you are looking for a good book on vertebrates, this is a must have. Just realize that some of the information may not reflect our current understanding since the book is over 10 years old and many new finds have come to light, new ideas have been introduced, and old ideas reexamined.

Awesome book regarding Vertebrate Paleontology:
This thoroughly researched, well written, and carefully illustrated volume is designed as a text book and reference for the documentation and study of the evolutionary history of backboned animals. It fully replaces and expands upon the previous standard in this area, A.S. Romer's Vertebrate Paleontology (3rd. ed., 1966). The first chapter is an excellent survey of vertebrate history and one of the clearest expositions of modern systematic methodology. Further chapters describe in some detail the fossil record of the vertebrates, in systematic and temporal sequence, with reviews of the most recent interpretations of each group. A final chapter discusses evolutionary topics such as punctuation or gradualism, macroevolution, adaptive radiation, and extinction. There are some errors and inconsistencies in the treatment of this reviewer's specialty, the primates, which leads one to wonder about accuracy in other groups about which Carroll is not expert. In addition, in a chapter on flight, birds and pterodactyls are wisely studied together, but bats are treated elsewhere (although mentioned at the outset). Despite these minor cavils, this is by far the best available work in the field. Highly recommended for all science collections

Not too bad, but dated:
This is an excellent overview of the evolutionary history and osteology of the vertebrate taxa, but it is dated, particularly as regards the Archosauromorpha. It's opposition to cladistic practices for formulating phylogenies, is also noteworthy. Thus, you will find that numerous bankrupt taxa and no longer accurate classification schemes still, unfortunately, present themselves in this volume.

I spent 2 weeks chewing on this book...:
...the only easily available work that goes to any depth on this intensely interesting subject. A large book of medium thickness with an average of about two drawings per page, including familial relationship diagrams. Since the late Paleozoic, there have been two significant branches of terrestrial vertebrates: the diapsids (crocs, dinosaurs, birds) and synapsids (pelycosaurs, theraspids, mammals). Sharing a common ancestry and evolving at times in parallel, nevertheless distinctive features appear early that, though not of immediately apparent significance, in fact consign the lines to their separate fates. The pelycosaur Dimetrodon, the familiar lizard-like reptile with a sail on its back that is often reproduced as a toy, and which I have always associated with the dinosaurs, is in fact a member of the synapsid line. The book points out how the process on the mandible that reaches up toward the temporal lobe is the beginning of a shift away from the ancestral quadrate-angular jaw articulation maintained by the diapsids through the birds. With the additional points of leverage provided, mammals were destined to become better chewers, able to move their jaws sideways in addition to up and down. The angular bone and one other bone in the mandible, incidentally, become modified to help pick up soundwaves, and eventually migrate to become one of the three bones in the middle ear. (Birds only have one bone in their middle ear, though interestingly, their hearing appears to be just as acute.) Mammals continued to refine their chewing mechanism, introducing improvements to their teeth. Instead of the saw of teeth possessed by dinosaurs and early reptiles, the mammals developed closely occluding teeth that allowed them to grind food more efficiently. Apparently the price for this matching of the upper and lower teeth is that mammals cannot replace their adult teeth once lost. If you are a specialist in one of the larger groups of vertebrates, such as the dinosaurs or the mammals, the coverage of this book will be unsatisfying. Sometimes I had difficulty determining what the defining characteristics that distinguished groups were, so I still can't look at a skeleton and know whether it's a pelycosaur or an early theraspid. On a related note, the relationship diagrams are not cladograms, but old-fashioned family tree type drawings, indicating not only relationship but the time period in which the group lived, with a thickening of the lines to show abundance.

Best vertebrate paleontology book ever:
Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution is the most complete and detailed book on that subject. It is the bible for people whose major interest in on vertebrate paleontology.