Coffee table books

Prehistoric Life - The Definitive Visual History of Life on Earth

Dorling Kindersley 2009

The mother of all coffee table books about fossils, large 12" x 10" size, > 500 pages,
thousands of high quality pictures, drawings and reconstructions.

If you know DK´s book "Fossils" from the "Eyewitness Handbooks"series, many of the pictures will be familiar to you. This is not your typical identification guide, e.g. don´t expect to see too many ammonites in there, it tries on the monumental task of giving a representative overview of characteristic fossils from earth´s history, from the most primitive bacterial life to the early humans.

Pictures in this book are extremely well done, very large format from the invertebrate sections to the most stunning close-up-and-personal pictures of dinosaur skeletons, which you´re only to see better in real life in a museum. There are some very good introductory chapters about Origin of the Earth, Plate tectonics, Changing climates,Life and Evolution, Classification, Mass Extinctions, Types of fossils, Information in the fossil record, Key fossil sites, The geological timescale, all done up to latest information, approximately the first 50 pages.
The following chapters deal with the time periods from the Archean to the Quaternary, each of them with plate tectonics,timelines,  introductions into special topics (e.g. origin of four legged animals in the Devonian) typical fossils, fossil reconstructions, short columns with biographies of scientists working in that specific field and more...

The cast of international scientists supporting the content of this book is impressive.
Language used is moderately scientific, but only used where necessary.

If you´re looking for an all-in overview about ancient life on earth, this is the book for you.
Not one you can read in bed (it´s just too bulky for that..), but one for a quiet after Xmas hour, when the kids are in bed, the heavy book resting on your lap, diving into earth´s ancient past...

This is not the book you need for identifying your finds, it just has not the room for going into more pictorial detail about specific fossil families, allthough generally the scientific names of fossils are given. Probably the only thing that annoys me about this book  is that exact locations where the fossils were found are only rarely given (only country or continent), allthough many (especially invertebrates) seem to be of british locations and rest in british museum collections.

I very much enjoyed (and still do) browsing and reading the book, it´s very well made and in my opinion for all the content (allthough some of it may be recycled from other DK books) quite inexpensive.

AndyS