Description
Book SynopsisOver half a billion years ago life on earth took an incredible step in evolution, when animals learned to build skeletons. Using many different materials, from calcium carbonate and phosphate, and even silica, to make shell and bone, they started creating the support structures that are now critical to most living forms, providing rigidity and strength. Manifesting in a vast variety of forms, they provided the framework for sophisticated networks of life that fashioned the evolution of Earth''s oceans, land, and atmosphere. Within a few tens of millions of years, all of the major types of skeleton had appeared. Skeletons enabled an unprecedented array of bodies to evolve, from the tiniest seed shrimp to the gigantic dinosaurs and blue whales. The earliest bacterial colonies constructed large rigid structures - stromatolites - built up by trapping layers of sediment, while the mega-skeleton that is the Great Barrier Reef is big enough to be visible from space. The skeletons of millions
Trade ReviewThe authors make the journey enchanting with stories of how fossils are found and why they are so important in the skeletal record. * Sandra Shefelbine, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and Bioengineering, Northeastern University, The Quarterly Review of Biology *
An engaging story... woven together here by tales of discovery and discoverers. * Robert Montgomerie, Times Higher Education *
Skeletons is a superb, highly enjoyable book ... very informative and engaging. * Melanie Brehaut, Palaeontological Association Newsletter *
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. * Michael Benton, University of Bristol *
Table of ContentsPrologue 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
