Skeletons

Sandra Shefelbine, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and Bioengineering, Northeastern University, The Quarterly Review of Biology The authors make the journey enchanting with stories of how fossils are found and why they are so important in the skeletal record.

Robert Montgomerie, Times Higher Education An engaging story... woven together here by tales of discovery and discoverers.

Melanie Brehaut, Palaeontological Association Newsletter Skeletons is a superb, highly enjoyable book ... very informative and engaging.

Michael Benton, University of Bristol In this book, Zalasiewicz and Williams provide an accessible and fun introduction to all kinds of skeletons, from the tiny capsules of microscopic diatoms to the great bones of the dinosaurs, and from lignified vascular plants to coral reefs. A great introduction to the evolution of life and especially to understanding why some organisms are small and some are large.

Mark Williams is Professor of Palaeobiology at Leicester University, and Dr Jan Zalasiewicz is Senior Lecturer in Palaeobiology, also at Leicester. Jan Zalasiewicz is the author of several books, including The Earth After Us (Oxford University Press, 2008); Rocks VSI (Oxford University Press, 2016); and The Planet in a Pebble (Oxford University Press, 2010), and appears regularly in the media as a commentator on the Anthropocene, extinctions, and other geological topics. Together they have authored two books, Ocean Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2014), and The Goldilocks Planet (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Prologue 1: A world (mostly) without skeletons 2: Skeleton diversity 3: A shell on the outside 4: A shell on the inside 5: Greening the land 6: Mega-skeletons 7: Mini-skeletons 8: Flying skeletons 9: Skeleton archives 10: Future skeletons Index