Customer Reviews

Wildlife of Gondwana: Dinosaurs and Other Vertebrates from the Ancient Supercontinent (Life of the Past)

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

 

 

For those interested in photographs of fossils found mainly in Australia from the Paleozoic through the Cenozoic (along with a few from Antarctica), then this is the book for you. Crisp high quality photographs of vertebrate fossils are provided, everything from the hindlimb of Dromornis stirtoni to the top view of the skull of Leaellynasaura to numerous fish fossils. The primary focus appears to be on dinosaurs, though extinct mammals are well covered as well.

Accompanying the photographs are short articles detailing various aspects of the region's history, such as extinction of Australia's Quarternary megafauna, the floodplain faunas of the Great Southern Rift Valley of the Early Cretaceous, the role the increasing aridity of post-Miocene Australia played in evolution, and the fauna of the Gogo Reef. Longer articles deal with the basic geologic and paleontological history of Gondwana, the history of research there, and the role of Gondwana in the global context of worldwide evolution of animals. Numerous photographs of wildlife today accompany discussions of the unique biogeography of Australia and the role isolation has played in the development of the organisms there.

A beautiful coffee-table book, I hold from giving five stars for two reasons. One, the price is fairly high; though a really nice book to own, it may be out of the price range for many, or at least more than they really want to pay. Two, though the numerous photographs of fossils in the book are really high quality, I think the book could have benefitted from more artists' illustrations of the animals and their environment in life. Though a few nice ones are included, several more could have really added to the value and popular appeal of this book. Many of the extinct fauna of Gondwana are bizarre and fascinating, particularly some of the extinct marsupial megafauna, and it would have been nice to see more illustrations of how they looked in life. All in all though a really well done book.

I compared the book Walking with Dinosaurs to a time machine. Well, here's another one. Wildlife of Gondwana is composed with love and devotion to the field of Paleontology. It is a momentous feeling to relive the evolution of our planet's surface leading to Gondwana and Laurasia and stunning to watch how vertebrate species diverged to fill all the ecological niches of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. A must for the dino lovers but also gives a fresh insight to other vertebrates that were contemporaries of the giant lizards. I hope there will once be a Wildlife of Laurasia, too.

Warning: the title of this book is highly misleading. By its content, it should be called "Fossil Vertebrates of Australia." If it really covered the wildlife of Gondwana, it would include a great deal RE invertebrates and plants and would give much, much more space than it does to Africa, South America, and India. The critters on the cover, BTW, are Pleistocene Australian forms, and therefore not from Gondwana (the ancient southern supercontinent) at all.

The chief value of this volume lies in its highly inclusive selection of spectacularly fine and detailed photos of Australian vertebrate fossils, including one of the famous opalized plesiosaurs. Alas, though, there are only a handful of whole-body reconstructions, though those few are very good.

Another problem, endemic to coffee-table books of this kind, is inconsistency of labeling, terminology, and interpretation. The authors can't decide, for example, whether sloths, armadillos and so on are to be called Edentates and placed among the placentals, or should be taken out of the placentals and called Paratheria. Similar inconsistency plagues the coloring of some geological maps, and even the definition of "teleost."

This book centers on the prehistoric animals of Australia. It starts at the Ordovician period and even includes a chapter on living animals of Australia. Also it talks about the history of paleontology on Australia. This book has a simple vocabulary and thus can be enjoyed anyone who have an interest in prehistoric life. It has many colored pictures that show fossils and recreations of animals. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in paleontology. Also I recommend the book "The flowering of Gondwana", that talks about the paleobotany of Australia.

This is a beautiful, well-written book with informative images and text. And deals almost exclusively with Australia, not Gondwana. Adding a few off-the-cuff references to other Gondwanan wildlife and paleontology does not give a comprehensive look at the full range of forms that would be found if this supercontinent was really looked at in detail--African Permian faunas, inverts from the Himalayas, South American mammal evolution in the Cenozoic. Australia is only one small part of the region (and for dinosaur lovers, this will be a big disappointment--no Argentinian giants here). I wouldn't dismiss this book, but it is certainly not what I expected (or was hoping for).

This book (revision of an earlier edition) was a nice surprise for someone who's a general reader and has gotten a little leery about buying the Indiana University Press Life of the Past Series. (Nothing against them, but for the money they usually charge I'd like something with less of the techno-babble that that so many of them are filled with; I understand that people have to write scientific papers, but why use titles that make them look like books for everyone?) This book is written for the general reader (without being dumbed down) and it is LOADED with clear, close-up, color photos of the fossils (too bad so few Australian fossils are dinosaurs), plus nice color graphics. Use the Amazon "Look Inside" to see the Table of Contents and samples of the color photos- it's not expensive for a book with so many good photos. I just started reading, but this seems to be a book that you can definitely skip to what interests you instead of reading straight through - a lot of fun.