Customer Reviews

Major Transitions in Vertebrate Evolution (Life of the Past)

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

 

 

This book contains excellent, college-level material. It is well-written, current, and thorough. However, I was disappointed by the misleading term 'major.' To me, this category includes the transition to warm-blood, emergence upon land, adoption of ruminant lifestyle with symbiotic bacteria, bipedalism, live-birth, and flight. The book is focused on anatomy (bone, cartilage, teeth), and of these topics only discusses flight (evolution of birds). Apparently physiology and ecology are not relevant.

"Major Transitions in Vertebrate Evolution" is a collection of excellent, state-of-the-art reviews of aspects of some of the principal transitions in the evolutionary history of vertebrates. In recent years, traditional research on the fossil record of many groups of vertebrates has been augmented by studies in the emerging discipline of 'evo-devo,' which utilizes sophisticated tools to explore the underlying controls of and pathways for the ontogenetic development of anatomical features. This combination of approaches has led to a veritable renaissance in the study of vertebrate evolution. The contributions in the present volume require solid grounding in the comparative anatomy and paleontology of vertebrates, and thus the book is definitely aimed at the advanced student and specialist. I particularly enjoyed the chapters by Hall and Witten on skeletal tissues, Janvier's magisterial review of the origin and early evolutionary history of vertebrates, and Caldwell's synopsis of thinking about the origin and evolution of snakes. The volume is beautifully produced and includes a section with superb color photographs. I definitely recommend it to any serious student of vertebrate biology and evolution.