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Favorite nonfiction fossil, paleontology, Earth science books?


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I'm currently reading Fossils: The Key to the Past by Richard Fortey. So far it's very good - very informative. I'm about half way through, and up to this point I'd give it 5/5 stars. Others may not care for it. Just my opinion. I've read several nonfiction science books over the past several months on everything from embryology to plant diversity to the end-Permian extinction to river and stream ecology. 

 

My favorite so far was The Story of Earth by Robert M. Hazen. Brilliant man, Brilliant book. 

 

Have you any nonfiction science related books (on paleontology or anything else science based) that you would recommend? Do you have a favorite? A "must read"? 

 

Scott.

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A Whole New World (1972) by Jean Davies Wright is a short one, but a classic, about fossiling in Ontario up around Arkona.

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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Dinosaurs in the Attic - Douglas Preston

Wonderful Life or, really, anything by Stephen Jay Gould

Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs - Michael Novacek

 

Anyone interested in science should read Hope Jahren's Lab Girl.

 

 

 

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Wendell Ricketts
Fossil News: The Journal of Avocational Paleontology
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1 minute ago, Wendell Ricketts said:

Dinosaurs in the Attic - Douglas Preston

Wonderful Life or, really, anything by Stephen Jay Gould

Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs - Michael Novacek

 

Anyone interested in science should read Hope Jahren's Lab Girl.

 

 

 

Stephen Jay Gould wrote a great entry in the long forgotten natural history classic, Our Continent. It's dated, but I had just picked it up at a charity used book sale for a dollar.

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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Sharks: The Perfect Predators by Alessandro de Maddalena. (Before reading this I was mostly just a casual shark fan/ shark tooth collector, great facts and examples about living sharks)

 

Why Elephants Have Large Ears- Chris Lavers (A must for tetrapod lovers in my opinion)

 

For Florida Vertebrates: The Fossil Vertebrates of Florida by Hulbert

& Renz's general Florida fossil book (haven't read his others, but he's good)

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Basin and Range, John McPhee.  Or any of his others. 

Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History by Peter Ward

Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey

Predatory Dinosaurs of the World by Gregory Paul

A Sea without Fish: Life in the Ordovician Sea of the Cincinnati Region (Life of the Past) by Richard Arnold Davis

Window Into the Jurassic World by Nicholas McDonald.

    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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4 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

Basin and Range, John McPhee.  Or any of his others. 

Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History by Peter Ward

Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Forte   Richard Fortey :P 

Predatory Dinosaurs of the World by Gregory Paul

A Sea without Fish: Life in the Ordovician Sea of the Cincinnati Region (Life of the Past) by Richard Arnold Davis

Window Into the Jurassic World by Nicholas McDonald.

Added. :)

 

Just one tiny edit: Fortey, not Forte. Although that would be a pretty cool name :D

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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1 minute ago, Kane said:

Added. :)

 

Just one tiny edit: Fortey, not Forte. Although that would be a pretty cool name :D

 Sorry,  Darn copy and paste! :P 

    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

John Muir ~ ~ ~ ~   ><))))( *>  About Me      

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54 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

Basin and Range, John McPhee.  Or any of his others. 

Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History by Peter Ward

Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey

Predatory Dinosaurs of the World by Gregory Paul

A Sea without Fish: Life in the Ordovician Sea of the Cincinnati Region (Life of the Past) by Richard Arnold Davis

Window Into the Jurassic World by Nicholas McDonald.

I really have been wanting to read that Gorgon book, but none of my local libraries have it. 

 

:(

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1 hour ago, Hat said:

I really have been wanting to read that Gorgon book, but none of my local libraries have it. 

 

:(

 

 

In Connecticut, we have an intra-library loan system.  Anything like that out there? 

 

If not, Amazon has some links to used bookstores that have it at relatively inexpensive prices. ;) 

    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

John Muir ~ ~ ~ ~   ><))))( *>  About Me      

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Oooh...

Australian Age of Dinosaurs Issues 1-12 by the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum and Vertebrate Paleontology of Australasia by Rich would have to be my favorites currently...it's been really hard for me to find any decent books related to paleontology in my area.

"Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another."
-Romans 14:19

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1 hour ago, Fossildude19 said:

 

 

In Connecticut, we have an intra-library loan system.  Anything like that out there? 

 

If not, Amazon has some links to used bookstores that have it at relatively inexpensive prices. ;) 

Yeah, I'll probably have to buy it. None of the libraries in this area have it. Even the colleges. I've found that college libraries have a far more extensive collection of all kinds of science books than the ordinary public libraries, and they usually will loan books to non-students.

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Leinen/Sarnthein: "Past patterns of Global Atmospheric Transport"

Futuyma/Slatkin: Co-evolution

Riding/Awramik: Microbial Sediments

Ranalli : Rheology of the Earth

Hsu/Jenkyns: Pelagic Sediments(etc)

Winkler: the Petrogenesis of Metamorphic Rocks

Evans/Wong: Fault Mechanics and Transport Properties of Rocks

McKinney/McNamara: Heterochrony

Hsu/Berckhemer: Alpine-Mediteranean Geodynamics

Hoffman/Nitecki : Problematic Fossil Taxa

Nance: Avalonian  and Related Peri-Gondwanan Terranes

Briggs/Crowther:Paleobiology

Neumann/Ramberg:Petrology and Geochemistry of Continental Rifts

Richard Reyment:Multidimensional Paleobiology

Lemoigne: La Flore au Cours des temps Geologiques

Rudwick: Fossil Brachiopods

Robert Bakker:The Dinosaur Heresies

Gould : Wonderful Life

Strand/ Kulling:The Scandinavian Caledonides

Holland : The Cambrian of the British Isles(etc)

Katz: Lacustrine Basin Exploration

Hanken/Hall: The Skull

Ballance : Sedimentation in Strike Slip Basins

Pat Willmer: Invertebrate Relationships

Dressler/Sharpton: Large Meteorite Impacts and Planetary Evolution(every volume in the series!:P)

Each of these books is ,IMHO,a classic

Most reviewers will agree with me,I think

 

 

 

 

 

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I also forgot to mention The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity by Douglas Erwin and James Valentine. A large, technical, and amazing book. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting a more thorough knowledge of the sudden expansion of biodiverversity during the Cambrian period along with in depth studies of the burgess shale fossils and other earlier fossils from around the world. If you read the reviews people say it's similar to a graduate level text book, though not exactly formatted in that manner. Plenty of large illustrations and plates to help the reader grasp the concepts also.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Cambrian-Explosion-Construction-Animal-Biodiversity/dp/1936221039

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11 minutes ago, doushantuo said:

so now you know the meaning of SSF?

And the significance of my avatar name? :P

You had me there for a moment. I almost had to use google. :D Yes small shelly fossils and the Doushantou formation in..... China?

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Anything on the Cambrian Explosion is outdated by now.

Maybe not by a great deal,but facts and speculation on the Pc/C boundary have been coming in thick and fast

Believe me,I know

Pal3 had a special issue on the Cambrian of China,BTW

edit: not sure about that last bit,I might be wrong

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, doushantuo said:

Anything on the Cambrian Explosion is outdated by now.

Maybe not by a great deal,but facts and speculation on the Pc/C boundary have been coming in thick and fast

Believe me,I know

That's something I'm constantly looking at when choosing a book of this sort - when was it written? I decided to read the Erwin and Valentine book because it was published in 2013, but as you said I have no idea what's happened over the past 4 years.

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5 hours ago, Kane said:

A Whole New World (1972) by Jean Davies Wright is a short one, but a classic, about fossiling in Ontario up around Arkona.

If you enjoyed A Whole New World, Jean Wright penned another book on the Arkona-Thedford area titled The River and the Rocks. It was published in 1986 by the Ausable-Bayfield Conservation Foundation.

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The Crucible of Creation by Simon Conway Morris (he actually worked on the Burgess Shale fossils)

pretty much anything by Richard Fortey is a good and informative read

 

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I just received this long awaited and highly anticipated update on the oldest 'Cambrian Explosion' fauna:

 

 

Hou, X.G., Siveter, D.J., Siveter, D.J., Aldridge, R.J., Cong, P.Y., Gabbott, S.E., Ma, X.Y., Purnell, M.A., & Williams, M. (2017)

The Cambrian Fossils of Chengjiang, China: The Flowering of Early Animal Life, Second Edition. 

Wiley - Blackwell Scientific Publishing, 316 pp.  LINK

 

 

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Here is the updated classification and list of species from Hou et al. 2017:

 

IMG1.thumb.jpg.3e52bd6fd29a48894e878e5816e42dbc.jpg  IMG2.thumb.jpg.a72082ada13822bf206c82cebe384771.jpg 

 

IMG3.thumb.jpg.558526f065121e6bc5174e4a8e83aae0.jpg  IMG4.thumb.jpg.721ac029d81c022ecd8ad793c95014e1.jpg

 

image.png.a84de26dad44fb03836a743755df237c.png

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