The Rise of Fishes: 500 Million Years of Evolution (ISBN 0801854385)

Fossil fish with a slight "Aussie" bias.:
John A. Long, a vertebrate paleontologist in Perth, is proud of the fossil record found in Austrialia. In this book he presents a manageable overview, encompassing 500 million years of fish evolution, with some interesting anecdotes about his own research. Long is a talented writer and brilliant scientific educator with a gentle, but obvious, bias towards the "land down under". The Rise of Fishes is well organized and beautifully illustrated. Photography of fossil specimens and locations is artfully presented. The chapters on lungfish development and tetrapod evolution (independent of one another) are easily understood and well documented sections. It's certainly one of the most visually compelling reference books available for the amateur fossil hunter or professional icthyologist/vertebrate paleontologist.

Easy to read evolutionary history of fishes:
Easy to read, containing hundreds of color illustrations, this reference nonetheless gives a detailed evolutionary history of the fishes. The reference starts with tunicates, cephalochordates and conodonts and moves on to the agnatha, sharks and the extinct acanthodians and placoderms. The emergence of the bony fish (class osteichthyes) in the late Silurian is then discussed. Major groups of this class include the ray-finned fishes (actinopterygii), the predatory lobe-finned fishes (crossopterygii) and the lungfishes (dipnoi), and each is discussed in more detail. The final chapter of the reference discusses the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapod.

A FASCINATING JOURNEY BACK THROUGH TIME:
Curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Western Australian Museum in Perth, Western Australia, John A. Long is a thoughtful scholar. He writes in his introduction, "The story of fishes through time is also the story of changing continents and climates, devastating mass extinctions, and changing faunas and floras." So begins a fascinating journey back through our planet's distant ages to begin the story of the evolution of fishes - the first creatures to have a skeleton. Armosred fishes, monster sharks, fishes with arms and fishes that breathe are all characters in this ongoing panorama of life then and now. Some 220 vibrant color photographs plus numerous color drawings and black and white photos enhance this meticulously prepared volume. For those with an interest in evolution, fossils or fish, The Rise of Fishes is not to be missed. - Gail Cooke

Highly Recommended:
The Rise of Fishes is a well illustrated coffee table sized 223 page book that contains a goldmine of information on fossil fish. In his very balanced book, Professor John H. Long reviews the theories of fish evolution and the evidence for each view (see page 30), but most of the book is a detailed description with excellent color photographs of the many fossil fish types that have been uncovered. Long has no shortage of material to work from, as about 80% of all fossils discovered are marine. He concludes that "the transition from spineless invertebrates to the first backboned fishes is still shrouded in mystery" (page 30). One fact that amazed me is the scores of examples of well known modern fish that are found in the fossil record dated at 50 to 200 million years old. For example, the Herring from the Green River Formation that are dated at about 55 million years are unmistakably Herring and appear identical to modern Herring. This book is one of the few ever published that I know of on fossil fish. One other book is Fishes, Living and Fossil by Bashford Dean which was published in 1895, and the conclusions of this book are much the same as Long's excellent 100 year old work. I did not agree with everything Long wrote. For example, he claimed that lungs are just modified versions of the swim bladder of osteichthyan fish (page 208). The differences are not all that minor, but are major. One often neglected point Long noted was that the evolution of the hard shelled egg or amniote egg was probably the greatest single advancement in the evolution of vertebrates from fish to human (page 209).

Forget the dinosaurs!:
This book should appeal to everyone who realizes that there is more to paleontology than dinosaurs and hominids! This was one of the first books to address fossil fishes as a popular read, though it is a pleasure for professionals as well. In fact, I often found myself glancing at some of the placoderm reconstructions during the course of my dissertation. The photos and illustrations, almost as abundant as text, are the most amazing part of this book. One really begins to realize the diversity of these dinosaur antecedents and marvel at the incredibly preserved specimens that Dr. Long and his Australian peers have uncovered. The Devonian actinopterygians on pages 41-42 look like they washed up on the beach yesterday! This book should be an integral part of anyone's paleolibrary, curious readers and paleoworkers alike.