Outlines of Vertebrate Palæontology

Abstract

IT is now thirty-eight years since the appearance of the first edition of Owen's “Palæontology,” which may be regarded as the first systematic treatise on that subject issued in this country. And if the section of that work devoted to the vertebrates be contrasted with the volume now before us, some idea of the enormous strides made in this branch of biological science during the period will be self-apparent. At the time that Owen wrote, our knowledge of fossil fishes remained much in the state it was left by the labours of Georges Cuvier and Hugh Miller; the restoration of the armour-plated fish-like types appearing as more or less grotesque caricatures of what we now know to be their true form; while the classification was as crude as it was un-philosophical.

Outlines of Vertebrate Palæontology.

By A. Smith Woodward. (Cambridge Natural Science Manuals.) Pp. xvi + 470; illustrated. (Cambridge: University Press, 1898.)