Review by Choice Review
Evolutionary biology was revitalized (as the "Modern Synthesis") in the 1940s through a combination of such disciplines as genetics, ecology, systematics, and paleontology. Some scholars have accorded paleontology a second-class status among these, thinking it a mere cataloguing of past life, often useful only for dating geological layers but not involved in higher theoretical analyses. Then, sometime between the 1950s and the 1970s, a group of paleontologists fused their field back into "real" biology and formed paleobiology, with a journal of the same name and greater emphasis on theoretical problems. This volume celebrates the history of that supposed transformation with 26 essays on both paleontological subjects and on the history and philosophy of paleontology and evolution. Some leaders of the revolution are missing: Stephen Jay Gould, of course, died in 2002, but his colleague Niles Eldredge, although cited numerous times, did not contribute a chapter. Vertebrate paleontologists are relatively rarer than their fossils, although they were generally more biologically oriented than stratigraphically minded colleagues who studied invertebrates. Nonetheless, this book provides an excellent summary of the new views that perked up (if not revolutionized) paleontology over the past half century. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty. E. Delson CUNY Herbert H. Lehman College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
