Next of Kin: Great Fossils at the American Museum of Natural History

摘要: This book, liberally illustrated with beautiful new color and archival photography, artwork graphics produced especially for the renovated exhibits, is an in-depth look at evolution of vertebrate animals in collection. In incisive, behind-the-scenes text, paleontologist Lowell Dingus discusses earliest specimens: fish, amphibians, primitive reptiles that represent evolutionary starting points major groups; popular saurischian dinosaurs, including seventeen-ton Apatosauris (once called Brontosaurus) skeleton; ornithischian dinosaurs such as horned Triceratops. He concludes mammal hills, where diverse fin-backed Dimetrodon, mastodons, and, after primates, our closest "next kin" - bats are shown to be related by one hole skull behind eye socket. modification illustrates contemporary approach readers will learn about cladistics, which establishes animal relationships based on unique shared anatomical changes were inherited over course time. The Museum galleries organized reflect how this has been used reconstruct family tree evolution: walking along main pathway through fossil halls like trunk tree.