Books in the Life of the Past series

Echinoderms (which include such animals as sea stars, crinoids or sea lilies, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers) have left useful fossil record. This volume highlights the modern study of fossil echinoderms.

A comprehensive study of the Late Cretaceous, duck-billed dinosaur, featuring insights on its origins, anatomy, and more.Hadrosaurs-also known as duck-billed dinosaurs-are abundant in the fossil record. With their unique complex jaws and teeth perfectly suited to shred and chew plants, they flourished on Earth in remarkable diversity during the Late Cretaceous. So ubiquitous are their remains that we have learned more about dinosaurian paleobiology and paleoecology from hadrosaurs than we have from any other group. In recent years, hadrosaurs have been in the spotlight. Researchers around the world have been studying new specimens and new taxa seeking to expand and clarify our knowledge of these marvelous beasts. This volume presents the results of an international symposium on hadrosaurs, sponsored by the Royal Tyrrell Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum, where scientists and students gathered to share their research and their passion for duck-billed dinosaurs. A uniquely comprehensive treatment of hadrosaurs, the book encompasses not only the well-known hadrosaurids proper, but also Hadrosaouroidea, allowing the former group to be evaluated in a broader perspective. The 36 chapters are divided into six sections-an overview, new insights into hadrosaur origins, hadrosaurid anatomy and variation, biogeography and biostratigraphy, function and growth, and preservation, tracks, and traces-followed by an afterword by Jack Horner."e;Well designed, handsome and fantastically well edited (credit there to Patricia Ralrick), congratulations are deserved to the editors for pulling together a vast amount of content, and doing it well. The book contains a huge quantity of information on these dinosaurs."e; -Darren Naish, co-author of Tetrapod Zoology, Scientific American"e;Hadrosaurs have not had the wide publicity of their flesh-eating cousins, the theropods, but this remarkable dinosaur group offers unique opportunities to explore aspects of palaeobiology such as growth and sexual dimorphism. In a comprehensive collection of papers, all the hadrosaur experts of the world present their latest work, exploring topics as diverse as taxonomy and stratigraphy, locomotion and skin colour."e; -Michael Benton, University of Bristol

Presents a systematic account of the known fossil salamanders of North America, illustrates and discusses the extinct salamanders, re-diagnosing or redescribing some on the basis of additional information and fossil material.

The biography of the largest carnivore that ever lived.

During the Early Cretaceous, lakes, meandering streams, and flood plains covered the region where the current foothills of Rioja now exist. Today the area is known for its wine and for the dozens of sites where footprints and trackways of dinosaurs, amphibians, and even pterosaurs can be seen. The dinosaurs that lived here 120 million years ago left their footsteps imprinted in the mud and moist soil. Now fossilized in rock, they have turned Rioja into one of the most valuable dinosaur footprint sites in all of Europe. Felix Perez-Lorente and his colleagues have published extensively on the region, mostly in Spanish-language journals. In this volume, Perez-Lorente provides an up-to-date synthesis of that research in English. He offers detailed descriptions of the sites, footprints, and trackways, and explains what these prints and tracks can tell us about the animals who made them.

Presents an overview of dinosaur discoveries in Mexico that synthesizes information about the geography and environment of the region during the Mesozoic when it was the western margin of the ancient continent of Pangea. This book summarizes research on various groups, including turtles, lepidosauromorphs, pleisosaurs, crocodyliforms, pterosaurs.

A major stepping stone toward a synthesis of the ecology and evolution of the Late Cretaceous ecosystems of western North America

Have you ever wondered what left behind those prints and tracks on the seashore, or what made those marks or dug those holes in the dunes? Life Traces of the Georgia Coast is an up-close look at these traces of life and the animals and plants that made them. It tells about how the tracemakers lived and how they interacted with their environments. This is a book about ichnology (the study of such traces) and a wonderful way to learn about the behavior of organisms, living and long extinct. Life Traces presents an overview of the traces left by modern animals and plants in this biologically rich region; shows how life traces relate to the environments, natural history, and behaviors of their tracemakers; and applies that knowledge toward a better understanding of the fossilized traces that ancient life left in the geologic record. Augmented by illustrations of traces made by both ancient and modern organisms, the book shows how ancient trace fossils directly relate to modern traces and tracemakers, among them, insects, grasses, crabs, shorebirds, alligators, and sea turtles. The result is an aesthetically appealing and scientifically grounded book that will serve as source both for scientists and for anyone interested in the natural history of the Georgia coast.

Written for everyone fascinated by the huge beasts that once roamed the earth, this book introduces the giant hornless rhinoceros, Indricotherium. These massive animals inhabited Asia and Eurasia for more than 14 million years, about 37 to 23 million years ago. They had skulls 6 feet long, stood 22 feet high at the shoulder, and were twice as heavy as the largest elephant ever recorded, tipping the scales at 44,100 pounds. Fortunately, the big brutes were vegetarians. Donald R. Prothero tells their story, from their discovery just a century ago to the latest research on how they lived and died.

Deals with the iconic dinosaur Iguanodon and its world

In 1961, while mapping rock exposures along the Colville River in Alaska, an oil company geologist would unknowingly find the evidence for a startling discovery. Long before the North Slope of Alaska was being exploited for its petroleum resources it was a place where dinosaurs roamed. Dinosaurs under the Aurora immerses readers in the challenges, stark beauty, and hard-earned rewards of conducting paleontological field work in the Arctic. Roland A. Gangloff recounts the significant discoveries of field and museum research on Arctic dinosaurs, most notably of the last 25 years when the remarkable record of dinosaurs from Alaska was compiled. This research has changed the way we think about dinosaurs and their world. Examining long-standing controversies, such as the end-Cretaceous extinction of dinosaurs and whether dinosaurs were residents or just seasonal visitors to polar latitudes, Gangloff takes readers on a delightful and instructive journey into the world of paleontology as it is conducted in the land under the aurora.

A vivid introduction to the dinosaurs of Spain

The Ornithopods include Iguanodon, one of the first dinosaurs ever discovered and analyzed, and perhaps the best-documented group, the hadrosaurs or 'duckbilled dinosaurs.' The Ceratopsians include Triceratops, known for its distinctive three-horned skull and protective collar. This book collects information on these two groups of animals.

Overs the years, the world was filled with fabulous creatures. There were wooly elephants and rhinos, saber-toothed cats, great wolves and lions, giant tortoises - and in Australia giant lizards. Megalania was one of those. This title tells the story of these amazing lizards and the world in which they lived.

An up-to-date exploration of vertebrate cave life during the Ice Age

Showcases research of broad botanical and paleontological interest from the world's experts on Mesozoic plant life. This title covers various aspects of plant group - ranging from horsetails to ginkgophytes, from cycads to conifers - and relates them to key innovations in structure, phylogenetic relationships, Mesozoic vegetation.

More than 10,000 years ago spectacularly large mammals roamed the pampas and jungles of South America. This book tells the story of these great beasts during and just after the Pleistocene, the geological epoch marked by the great ice ages. Megafauna describes the history and way of life of these animals, their comings and goings, and what befell them at the beginning of the modern era and the arrival of humans. It places these giants within the context of the other mammals then alive, describing their paleobiology-how they walked; how much they weighed; their diets, behavior, biomechanics; and the interactions among them and with their environment. It also tells the stories of the scientists who contributed to our discovery and knowledge of these transcendent creatures and the environment they inhabited. The episode known as the Great American Biotic Interchange, perhaps the most important of all natural history "e;experiments,"e; is also an important theme of the book, tracing the biotic events of both North and South America that led to the fauna and the ecosystems discussed in this book.

The Age of Mammals, the Cenozoic Era, has never had its Jurassic Park, but it was an amazing time in earth's history, populated by a wonderful assortment of bizarre animals. This book presents their story, which is part of a larger story of a world emerging from the greenhouse conditions of the Mesozoic.

A wide-ranging volume of analytic and methodological essays on microvertebrate fossils

Told in rich detail and with gorgeous color recreations, this is the story of marine life in the age before the dinosaurs. During the Middle Triassic Period (247-237 million years ago), the mountain of Monte San Giorgio in Switzerland was a tropical lagoon. Today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because it boasts an astonishing fossil record of marine life from that time. Attracted to an incredibly diverse and well-preserved set of fossils, Swiss and Italian paleontologists have been excavating the mountain since 1850.Synthesizing and interpreting over a century of discoveries through a critical twenty-first century lens, paleontologist Olivier Rieppel tells for the first time the complete story of the fish and marine reptiles who made that long-ago lagoon their home. Through careful analysis and vividly rendered recreations, he offers memorable glimpses of not only what Thalattosaurs, Protorosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Pachypleurosaurs, and other marine life looked like but how they moved and lived in the lagoon. An invaluable resource for specialists and accessible to all, this book is essential to all who are fascinated with ancient marine life.

The Cambrian Period was a critical time in Earth's history during this immense span of time nearly every modern group of animals appeared. This book deals with the life and times of the amazing animals that inhabited Earth more than 500 million years ago.

Discoveries of ancient vertebrates are eroding the traditionally recognized differences between the principal groups of vertebrates and radically changing our understanding of the evolutionary history of the major group of animals to which our species belongs. This book describes this changing scientific landscape.

The forbidding Big Badlands in Western South Dakota contain the richest fossil beds in the world. Even today these rocks continue to yield new specimens brought to light by snowmelt and rain washing away soft rock deposited on a floodplain long ago. The quality and quantity of the fossils are superb: most of the species to be found there are known from hundreds of specimens. The fossils in the White River Group (and similar deposits in the American west) preserve the entire late Eocene through the middle Oligocene, roughly 35-30 million years ago and more than 30 million years after non-avian dinosaurs became extinct. The fossils provide a detailed record of a period of abrupt global cooling and what happened to creatures who lived through it. The book provides a comprehensive reference to the sediments and fossils of the Big Badlands and will complement, enhance, and in some ways replace the classic 1920 volume by Cleophas C. O'Harra. Because the book focuses on a national treasure, it touches on National Park Service management policies that help protect such significant fossils.

An entertaining and informative guide to an astonishing and little-known world