Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution

"Well, yes, this book was one of my textbooks during my degree which was in zoology (largely paleontology). It’s full of drawings of the skeletons of vertebrates. Most people who do my degree, especially boys if I’m allowed to say that, played with plastic dinosaurs when they were younger, and had all the old-fashioned paleontology books which would have looked much like this one. Going to the Natural History Museum as a child is fascinating: seeing all the fossils and skeletons, I’d be just overwhelmed by the age, or complexity, or similarity of these things. I just don’t tire of classical old-fashioned paleontology books for this same reason – a childish interest in the sheer bizarreness of the way that animals work. Well in one way yes. But, in fact, the more you learn about the structure of animals, the more you realise that, despite appearance, they are not that diverse at all. All the many different species are all made of the same bits as each other. There are rarely any new bones added, the structure is just distorted. You could compare animal structures to LEGO and the way you can make new creations from the same parts. It’s fascinating to think that we are made from all the same bits that dinosaurs were. If you get enough fossils in a line, then you can just watch animals morphing from dinosaurs into birds."