Customer Reviews
A beautiful book - By: Agah UGUZ, 28 Sep 2003 
It is a beautiful book with over 1,000 high-quality pictures. As soon as I bought the book, I was able identify couple of fossils I found accidentally. After an introductory section, there are three sections; namely, invertebrates, vertebrates & plants. The introductory chapter includes where to look for fossils & equipment for fossil collection. In general there are about two to three fossils introduced on one page. As well as the photograph of the fossil, there is a tiny drawing of the complete animal (or plant) at the corner (I managed to find the names of my daughter's toy dinosaurs by looking at these pictures). The order to which the fossil belongs, name of the family, habitats & the informal name, together with the geological range, geographical distribution & the occurrence frequency are all given. Explanations are brief but more than enough for amateurs like me.
Nice pictures,but could have been so much better - By: , 07 Jul 2002 
I agree that this is a beautiful book at a bargain price. It is also useful for what it says is its main aim: enabling the reader to identify fossils. It could however have been so much better,
First, I found the organization rather chaotic. Why are thingsin the order they are? There might be a scheme, but if so I couldn't work out what it was. What is the difference between the bivalve & brachiopod, for instance?
Second, although the "reconstructions" have a size, the fossils themselves don't have a scale - presumably the teeth & otoliths are tiny, but they look huge.
Third, I would have liked more background. There needs to a biological overview: what are phyla, how are different organisms related to one another, how things fitin with evolution.
Fourth, some of the text is just difficult to follow - there are too many technical terms. Line drawings illustrating the names of parts referred to are essential.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh: this is a photo guide, not a palaeontology text, after all. But then why is the text so hard goingin places? It's frustrating, because with a bit more thought this could have been a superb book.
A beautiful book - By: Agah UGUZ, 07 Sep 2001 It is a beautiful book with over 1,000 high-quality pictures. As soon as I bought the book, I was able identify couple of fossils I found accidentally. After an introductory section, there are three sections; namely, invertebrates, vertebrates & plants. The introductory chapter includes where to look for fossils & equipment for fossil collection. In general there are about two to three fossils introduced on one page. As well as the photograph of the fossil, there is a tiny drawing of the complete animal (or plant) at the corner (I managed to find the names of my daughter's toy dinosaurs by looking at these pictures). The order to which the fossil belongs, name of the family, habitats & the informal name, together with the geological range, geographical distribution & the occurrence frequency are all given. Explanations are brief but more than enough for amateurs like me.
