What Your Fossils Can Tell You: Vertebrate Morphology, Pathology, and Cultural Modification

What Your Fossils Can Tell You is a book that provides information and tools for identifying and interpreting fossils, including photographs of rare and unique fossil items. It is written for amateur fossil hunters and professionals, bridging the fields of pathology and archaeology.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 400 pages
Publication date: 07 December 2022
Publisher: University Press of Florida

Written primarily for the avid amateur and beginning paleontologist, What Your Fossils Can Tell You offers both experienced and novice fossil hunters and collectors the information needed to correctly identify and interpret the significance of their discoveries.

Professionals in the field may also use this book as a pictorial resource to assist them in bridging the fields of pathology and archaeology as they relate to paleontology.

Amateur fossil hunters are presented with the tools they need to recognize significant finds and knowledge of how to collect vertebrate fossils responsibly and legally.

Robert Sinibaldi, in informal collaboration with a number of fossil experts, has compiled materials with a wide appeal. He explains many of the complex bumps, grooves, markings, and other anomalies that occur on fossil bones and teeth. A wealth of photographs helps readers visually identify these features and apply related concepts to their personal collections. Along with many common specimens, scores of unique fossil items appear here in print for the first time.

The dynamic story of ancient life and death, as well as the post-mortem utilization of bones, is accessible from the study of bone shapes. It is this very thing that made me want to be a paleontologist in the first place.

Pennilyn Higgins, University of Rochester

Dimension: 254 x 178 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780813068701