Life of the Past
3 total works
The famous bone beds of the Morrison Formation, whose rocks are exposed from Wyoming down through the red rock region of the American Southwest, have yielded one of the most complete pictures of any ancient vertebrate ecosystem in the world. After more than a century of exploration, the Morrison continues to yield new discoveries about a time so different from our own that it almost seems imaginary. Aimed at the general reader, Jurassic West tells the story of the life of this ancient world as scientists have so far been able to reconstruct it. The book recounts the discovery of many important Late Jurassic dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus. But dinosaurs comprise barely a third of the more than 90 types of vertebrates known from the Formation, which include crocodiles and turtles, frogs and salamanders, dinosaurs and mammals, clams and snails, and ginkgoes, ferns, and conifers.
The famous bone beds of the Morrison Formation, formed one hundred and fifty million years ago and running from Wyoming down through the red rock region of the American Southwest, have yielded one of the most complete pictures of any ancient vertebrate ecosystem in the world. Jurassic West, Second Edition tells the story of the life of this ancient world as scientists have so far been able to reconstruct it.
Aimed at the general reader, Jurassic West, Second Edition recounts the discovery of many important Late Jurassic dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus. But dinosaurs compose barely a third of the more than 90 types of vertebrates known from the formation, which include crocodiles and turtles, frogs and salamanders, dinosaurs and mammals, clams and snails, and ginkgoes, ferns, and conifers.
Featuring nearly all new illustrations, the second edition of this classic work includes new taxa named since 2007, updates to the naming and classifications of some old taxa, and expanded sections on numerous aspects of Morrison Formation paleontology and geology.
Despite their fame and reputation, dinosaurs represent only half the story of the Mesozoic Era. In Beast Companions: The Unsung Animals of the Dinosaurs' World, paleontologist John Foster explores the often-overlooked animals that coexisted with them. These ancient species, often equally remarkable as their dinosaur neighbors, can provide valuable insights into the biotic history of our planet. In some cases, these animals reveal just as much, if not more, about the extinct ecosystems of the time as the dinosaurs themselves.
By drawing on a wealth of current and past discoveries, Foster embarks on a sweeping journey across 164 million years to visit the beast companions of the dinosaurs. Along the way, he examines fish, insects, the first frogs and salamanders, turtles, snakes and lizards, marine reptiles, crocodiles, pterosaurs, birds, mammals, and other animals of the Mesozoic Era.
Beast Companions is a groundbreaking exploration of the story of these contemporaries of the dinosaurs that set the modern world in motion more than 200 million years ago