Research Catalog

Title

Vertebrate palaeontology : biology and evolution / Michael J. Benton.

Author

Benton, M. J. (Michael J.)

Publication

London ; Boston : Unwin Hyman, 1990.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 377 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

Presents an outline of the history of the vertebrates, based on studies by palaeontologists around the world.--

Subject

• Vertebrates, Fossil
• Paleontology > History
• Paleontology
• Paläontologie
• Wirbeltiere
• Paleozoölogie
• Gewervelde dieren
• Evolutie
• Vertébrés > Fossiles
• Paléontologie

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 340-362) and index.

Contents

• Vertebrate origins -- The oldest chordate and the oldest vertebrate -- Sea squirts and the lancelet -- Phylum Hemichordata: pterobranchs and acorn worms -- Chordate origins: embryology and relationships -- Craniates and the head -- How to study fossil vertebrates -- Digging up bones -- Geology and fossil vertebrates -- Biology and fossil vertebrates -- Early fishes -- The extinct jawless fishes -- Living agnathans -- Origin of jaws and gnathostome relationships -- Class Chondrichthyes: the first sharks -- Class Placodermi: armour-plated monsters -- Class Acanthodii: the 'spiny skins' -- Devonian environments -- The bony fishes -- Early fish evolution and mass extinction -- The early tetrapods and amphibians -- Problems of life on land -- Devonian tetrapods -- The Carboniferous world -- Diversity of Carboniferous tetrapods -- Temnospondyls and reptiliomorphs after the Carboniferous -- Evolution of the modern amphibians -- The evolution of early amniotes -- Hylonomus and Paleothyris -- biology of the first amniotes -- The cleidoic egg -- a private pond -- The Carboniferous amniotes -- The Permian world -- Pelycosaurs -- the sail-backed synapsids -- The therapsids of the Late Permian -- Radiation of anapsids and diapsids in the Permian -- Mass extinction -- Reptiles of the Triassic -- The Triassic scene -- Evolution of the archosauromorphs -- In Triassic seas -- The origin of the dinosaurs -- The evolution of fishes after the Devonian -- The early sharks and chimaeras -- Post-Palaeozoic chondrichthyan evolution -- The early bony fishes.
• Radiation of the teleosts -- Post-Devonian evolution of fishes -- The age of dinosaurs -- Biology of Plateosaurus -- The Jurassic and Cretaceous world -- The diversity of saurischian dinosaurs -- The diversity of ornithischian dinosaurs -- Dinosaurian biology -- warm-blooded or not? -- Order Pterosauria -- Order Crocodylia -- Order Testudines: the turtles -- Superorder Lepidosauria -- The great sea dragons -- Diversification of Jurassic -- Cretaceous reptiles -- The great extinction -- The birds -- Archaeopteryx -- The origins of bird flight -- Toothed birds of the Cretaceous -- Flightless birds: Division Palaeognathae -- Division Neognathae -- Diversification of the birds -- The mammals -- The cynodonts and the acquisition of mammalian characters -- Morganucodon -- the first mammal -- The Mesozoic mammals -- The marsupials -- South American mammals -- another world apart -- The beginning of the age of placental mammals -- Order Lipotyphla: hedgehogs, moles and shrews -- Order Carnivora -- Superorder Archonta: bats, tree shrews, flying lemurs and primates -- Radiation of the rodents -- Order Perissodactyla: browsers and grazers -- Order Artiodactyla: cattle, deer and pigs -- Order Cetacea: evolution of the whales -- Grandorder Paenungulata: elephants and their relatives -- Orders Tubulidentata and Pholidota: odd ant-eaters -- Extinctions in the Ice Ages -- Phylogeny of the placentals -- The pattern of mammalian evolution -- Human evolution -- What are the primates? -- The early fossil record of primates.
• Superfamily Hominoidea: the apes -- Evolution of human characteristics -- The early stages of human evolution -- The last two million years of human evolution -- Classification of the vertebrates.

ISBN

• 0045660026
• 9780045660025
• 0045660018
• 9780045660018

LCCN

89070704

OCLC

• ocm20825741
• 20825741
• SCSB-1896578

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library