Review by Choice Review
Florida contains a large number of fossil vertebrates and has a long history of study by both amateurs and professionals. Most surficial deposits in Florida are Miocene (about 24 million years old) and younger, but because the sediments were not deeply buried, they remain mostly unconsolidated and the vertebrate bones and teeth they contain are easily collected. This book is an edited and rewritten compilation of pamphlets on the major vertebrate fossil groups in Florida, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The photographs and drawings are superb, ensuring that this book will function as a general anatomy resource, an identification guide (although necessarily incomplete), and an introduction to vertebrate paleobiology. The geological context of the fossils is not as well developed. This brief section includes an unconventional time scale correlation chart that can be misleading (it implies that land mammal ages have been reorganized since 1975), and has an uncharacteristic lack of figures. The writing is generally good, but it is difficult to tell who wrote what and when. The original pamphlets include some that "needed only minor editing and updating" and others that "required almost total rewriting," but we do not know which. Still, a useful reference for paleontologists. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals; two-year technical program students. M. A. Wilson College of Wooster
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
