Customer Reviews

Fossil Treasures of the Anza-Borrego Desert

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book is concise, direct and easy for the layman to read and understand. It has beautiful illustrations and answers most of the questions anyone who is interested in the recent (the past 7 million years) history of animal life in the U.S. could have. The book covers everything from invertebrates (small sea life with no backbone) to mammoths. It lets the reader know when and where many of these animals have been found and gives a good description. I'd rate the book five stars.

Jerry Hughes

This book has some complicated stuff in it, but it is made understandable for the non-scientist. Really fabulous illustrations help you imagine what it was like at Anza-Borrego a million years ago. If you have specific questions about the Pleistocene life in the park, you can just read a specific chapter. Or, you can get a complete overview reading the whole book. Slightly challenging for the non-scientist, but understandable and enjoyable. I'd recommend it for anyone who is interested in fossils, mammoths, or the Pleistocene scene.

Knowledgeably compiled and co-edited by George T. Jefferson (District Paleontologist, Colorado Desert District, California State Parks) and Lowell Lindsay (CEO and Publisher, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, California), Fossil Treasures Of The Anza-Borrego Desert is an impressively informative collection enhanced with over 300 photographs, maps, tables, appendices, illustrations, and diagrams with useful, helpful and informative information on California's awe-inspiring Anza-Borrego State Park. Introducing the reader to studies from twenty-three leading paleontologists and experts, Fossil Treasures Of The Anza~Borrego Desert educates and elaborates the many intricacies and interesting images of the intriguing desert terrain. An invaluable addition to academic and community library paleontology collections, Fossil Treasures Of The Anza~Borrego Desert is very strongly recommended to scholarship as well as non-specialist general readers with an interest in paleontology.

The book is thorough on the subject. It contains mainly technical information and can get you bogged down a little bit. It is a good source of information for fossil buffs. It met my expectations on information on the fossils of Anza-Borrego.

The question of why horses and camels died out in the new world,
but survived in Asia and Africa is what this book brings home to me.
The connection of the fossil record with reconstructions of long dead ecologies is very well presented here.
Climatic changes seem to have been more drastic in the new world than in the old. Some species we only know existed from fossil reconstructions and we only have these artist renderings to be able to picture what they actually looked like. As robust as camels and horses are, it had to be extreme conditions that led to their disappearing.
Only by such studies as in this book can young reading get a feel for what is now dust and rock, but once was a living environment.