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Between the quick and the dead

¹ Department of Earth Sciences University of California Riverside, California 92521 nigel.hughes@ucr.edu

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Principles of Paleontology (third edition). Michael Foote and Arnold I. Miller. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco. 2007. 480 pages. Cloth $97.00.

In the first editions of Principles of Paleontology, Raup and Stanley produced a new kind of paleontology text, evidently a "leader" among texts, according to the classification Raup provides in the forward to the new edition. Foote and Miller's choice to revise that book, rather than attempt to replace it, fittingly reflects both the new edition's approach and content, and its homage to its predecessor. The challenge that Foote and Miller faced, as Raup articulated in the forward, was to provide a book that encapsulates current knowledge in a field that has matured considerably in both practice and theory, while continuing to prompt the way forward.

The new edition certainly addresses a need. The magnitude of work required to move beyond second edition of Principles in a comprehensive manner, yet remaining mindful of the limited curriculum space available for upper-level undergraduate classes in paleontology, may explain why no one had effectively usurped the older edition to date. But the absence of a successor left the field hanging. There has been no easily accessible summary of the developments that . . . [Full Text of this Article]