The case history approach has an impressive record of success in a variety of disciplines. Collections of case histories, casebooks, are now widely used in all sorts of specialties other than in their familiar appli cation to law and medicine. The case method had its formal beginning at Harvard in 1871 when Christopher Lagdell developed it as a means of teaching. It was so successful in teaching law that it was soon adopted in medical education, and the collection of cases provided the raw material for research on various diseases. Subsequently, the case history approach spread to such varied fields as business, psychology, management, and economics, and there are over 100 books in print that use this approach. The idea for a series of Casehooks in Earth Science grew from my experience in organizing and editing a collection of examples of one variety of sedimentary deposits. The prqject began as an effort to bring some order to a large number of descriptions of these deposits that were so varied in presentation and terminology that even specialists found them difficult to compare and analyze. Thus, from the beginning, it was evident that something more than a simple collection of papers was needed. Accordingly, the nearly fifty contributors worked together with George de Vries Klein and me to establish a standard format for presenting the case histories.

You haven’t changed a bit! Living fossils, or modern-day animals that very closely resemble their ancient relatives. Meet the coelacanth, horseshoe crab, dragonfly, tuatara, nautilus, and Hula painted frog. All are living fossils. Why have they changed so little over time, while other animals evolved or went extinct? Using contrasting "then" and "now" illustrations, veteran nonfiction writer Caroline Arnold alternates between a prehistoric creature in its native environment and its contemporary living-fossil counterpart. An amazing way to experience the ancient past! Back matter includes a time line, additional information about the six living fossils, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading.

"Darwin's book on evolution admitted that "intermediate links" were "perhaps the most obvious and serious objection to the theory" of evolution. Darwin recognized that the fossils collected by scientists prior to 1859 did not correspond with his theory of evolution, but he predicted that his theory would be confirmed as more and more fossils were found. One hundred and fifty years later, Evolution: The Grand Experiment critically examines the viability of Darwin's theory"--

"An engrossing tale of obsession, adventure and scientific reasoning." —Betty Ann Kevles, Los Angeles Times In the winter of 1938, a fishing boat by chance dragged from the Indian Ocean a fish thought extinct for 70 million years. It was a coelacanth, which thrived concurrently with dinosaurs and pterodactyls—an animal of major importance to those who study the history of vertebrate life. Living Fossil describes the life and habitat of the coelcanth and what scientists have learned about it during fifty years of research. It is an exciting and very human story, filled with ambitious and brilliant people, that reveals much about the practice of modern science.

The purpose of this book is to give an account of the life and times of a single species of fish, Latimeria chalumnae- the coelacanth (or are there now two species?). Before the discovery of the modern Latimeria, relationships of the coelacanths were thought to lie with the rhipidistians, a group of fossil fishes that many think are tetrapod ancestors. Hence, by looking at the modern coelacanth and assuming conservatism we may be able to reconstruct the life of the 'missing link' between fishes and tetrapods. The coelacanth is the only living animal to retain some structuralcharacteristics that were certainly present in the tetrapod ancestors, such as the intracranial joint. Therefore it is of some interest to try and find out how this joint works and what it is there for. The gene pool of the coelacanth has been separated from that of all other living vertebrates for at least 360 million years. Therefore, it is of some interest to find out how much deviation from contemporaneous fishes there has been. Coelacanths have often been used as the classic example of a particular evolutionary pattern whereby evolution is very fast in the early years and then slows down to stability and finally stagnation. This needs to be evaluated in the light of what we now know of the history of the coelacanths as a genetic lineage.

1. 1 Nautilus and Allonautilus: Two Decades of Progress W. Bruce Saunders Department of Geology Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr PA 19010 wsaunder@brynmawr. edu Neil H. Landman Division of Paleontology American Museum of Natural History New York, New York 10024 landman@amnh. org When Nautilus: Biology and Paleobiology of a Living Fossil was published in 1987, it marked a milestone in cross-disciplinary collaboration. More than half of the contributing authors (36/65) were paleontologists, many of whom were collaborating with neontological counterparts. Their interest in studying this reclusive, poorly known animal was being driven by a search for clues to the mode of life and natural history of the once dominant shelled cephalopods, through study of the sole surviving genus. At the same time, Nautilus offered an opportunity for neontologists to look at a fundamentally different, phylogenetically basal member of the extant Cephalopoda. It was a w- win situation, combining paleontological deep-time perspectives, old fashioned expeditionary zeal, traditional biological approaches and new techniques. The results were cross-fertilized investigations in such disparate fields as ecology, functional morphology, taphonomy, genetics, phylogeny, locomotive dynamics, etc. As one reviewer of the xxxvi Introduction xxxvii book noted, Nautilus had gone from being one of the least known to one of the best understood of living cephalopods.

Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and sentence highlighting to engage reluctant readers! In the history of life on this planet, 99.9 percent of all species have gone extinct. But a few have survived almost unchanged. Author Rebecca E. Hirsch introduces readers to six living fossils, including the chambered nautilus, the horseshoe crab with its sticky blue blood, and venomous platypuses that sting, as well as a comprehensive explanation of evolution and extinction for readers who may not be familiar with the terms yet. Readers will also discover a a spectacular timeline of the history of animal life on Earth. Dive into the stories of these incredible animals and find out how they help scientists piece together evolutionary history.