Discovering Fossil Fishes

Rating:
Summary: Discovering Fossil Fishes
Review: Discovering Fossil Fishes written by John G. Maisey is a book covering fish fossilization through out history. Spanning more the one-half billion years fishes are older than dinosaurs and have links to the tetrapods on land.

This book is highly illustrated with art work one nearly half of the pages with the dialog on the other half of the book. Fishes have a unique evolutionary history that stretches back in time, they are incredibly ancient and include the ancestors of all the limbed vertebrates living on the land.

I found the book to be highly readable and easy to follow as this book could be read and understood by those twelve years old or older. There are color illustrations along with fossilized pictures comparing both. This gives the reader a good approximation as to what the fossil would look like in life.

From their ancient ancestors, the craniates, fishes evolved not once, in a single lineage, but multiple times, filling countless biological niches. Given their long evolutionary history, itis not surprising that so many species of fishes exist today; one new fish species evolving every 18,000 years, or about 55.5 species evolving per one million years. The sum total of fishy diversity through time is far greater than now, and the evolutionary history of fishes is a vast and comples subject.

But, the author wrote this book with the layreader in mind and the prose are simple but very effective. as more fossil fishes are uncovered we will know better what the ancient world looked like and come to discover more of our own ancestors.

Rating:
Summary: Discovering Fossil Fishes
Review: Discovering Fossil Fishes written by John G. Maisey is a book covering fish fossilization through out history. Spanning more the one-half billion years fishes are older than dinosaurs and have links to the tetrapods on land.

This book is highly illustrated with art work one nearly half of the pages with the dialog on the other half of the book. Fishes have a unique evolutionary history that stretches back in time, they are incredibly ancient and include the ancestors of all the limbed vertebrates living on the land.

I found the book to be highly readable and easy to follow as this book could be read and understood by those twelve years old or older. There are color illustrations along with fossilized pictures comparing both. This gives the reader a good approximation as to what the fossil would look like in life.

From their ancient ancestors, the craniates, fishes evolved not once, in a single lineage, but multiple times, filling countless biological niches. Given their long evolutionary history, itis not surprising that so many species of fishes exist today; one new fish species evolving every 18,000 years, or about 55.5 species evolving per one million years. The sum total of fishy diversity through time is far greater than now, and the evolutionary history of fishes is a vast and comples subject.

But, the author wrote this book with the layreader in mind and the prose are simple but very effective. as more fossil fishes are uncovered we will know better what the ancient world looked like and come to discover more of our own ancestors.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece for serious students
Review: I came across this book while finishing my MSc at Guelph. The book soon made its rounds among all the ichthyology students and faculty. It is well written, lavishly illustrated and nicely designed. Seeing this volume going for so cheap surprises me. I paid 5 times more for mine. Any student involved with fish taxonomy, evolution and general biology MUST get this book. I found the lateral views a bit goofy but the paintings of creatures in motion in their habitat are superb. People who are interested in early life on our planet should also consider having a look at this one. BRAVO Dr. Maisey!

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful and informative book about fish evolution.
Review: If you're the type of reader who spends a little more time at the local aquarium, who marvels at any creature dangling from the fishing line, or cherishes the little fossil Knightia you bought as a child, this book is essential reading. Discovering Fossil Fishes presents the 500 million year evolutionary history of fishes in a logical and visually stunning presentation that is highly informative and entertaining. The book features outstanding photography of fossil specimens found around the globe. Fine illustrations offer a window into a prehistoric aquatic environment filled with both exotic and familiar-looking fish. The juxtaposition of the fossil specimen images with the "reconstructed" illustrations helps readers appreciate the value of our fossil record in understanding the subtleties of evolutionary development.

Rating:
Summary: Fossils galore!
Review: Maisey is a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. With this work he has brought the evolution of the fishes to the popular science reader. My only major complaint about this book is in format. I would like to have seen it arranged by geological period as apposed to taxonomic group. I also think that a more visual group of cladograms arranging all the fishes would have been in order. Many cladograms are included but they only show small snippets of the relationships between fishes and you have to piece a larger picture together throughout the book. The illustrations are excellent and you will have a hard time finding so many images of fossil fish, if you are just interested in seeing images of fossils then this will be great for you. I also liked how he discussed the development of major morphological features. While a person of specialized interest might be aware of these, having them all in one place is convenient.

If you have a developing interest in fishes or in vertebrate paleontology than this book would be good to have. It would also be a nice compliment to any library including material on natural history.

Rating:
Summary: Something fishy.
Review: One of my areas of interest is geology, in which I am a few credits shy of a bachelor's degree, and my particular area of concentration was paleontology. I have to admit that my favorites are the invertebrates, but I thought that a book on fossil fish might improve my appreciation for them. In this I was a little disappointed. Although I enjoyed the material on the origin of various structures, ie) calcified bones, the jaws, etc. much of it was already familiar to me from other sources. I have to agree with the other reviewers, the book is splendidly illustrated, both with the fossel specimen themselves and with artistic interpretation of them. But although it is a "pretty" book, it is probably a little too detailed for the casual reader on paleontology and a little to general for a specialist. The former might easily get bogged down in the details of the fish lineages, while the former might prefer an encyclopedia of fossel fish types to use as a source for identification of field specimen. On the whole just a so-so book.

Rating:
Summary: Artistic Genius
Review: The text is average but the pictures are outstanding! Most paleo-artists prefer to envision land animals or birds as opposed to sea life.
I am totally in awe of paleo-sea life and addicted to thumbing through this book!

Rating:
Summary: Artistic Genius
Review: The text is average but the pictures are outstanding! Most paleo-artists prefer to envision land animals or birds as opposed to sea life.
I am totally in awe of paleo-sea life and addicted to thumbing through this book!

Rating:
Summary: Discovering Dogmatic Despair
Review: This is a beautiful coffee-table book. It has many beautiful illustrations and photographs of fossil fishes. Unfortunately, the text is marred by the author's crusade to convince us that we are essentially mutant fish.

While often noting that different kinds of fishes have no discernable ancestors and in several occassions the presumed phylogenies derived by cladistics is in reverse order to the actual fossils, he constantly waves vaguely at large groups and staunchly maintains the validity of stating imaginary relationships as fact.

If you want to just look at the pictures, or to get a strong dose of rote evolutionary dogmatism, or to feel regret that we ever made the "major" step in the wrong direction of losing our gills, it may be worth buying; otherwise, save your money.