''Vertebrate Palaeontology'' is a basic textbook on

vertebrate paleontology Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord. It also tries to connect, by us ...

Michael J. Benton Michael James Benton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 8 April 1956) is a British palaeontologist, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the School of Earth Sciences ...

, published by

Blackwell's Blackwell UK, also known as Blackwell's and Blackwell Group, is a British academic book retailer and library supply service owned by Waterstones. It was founded in 1879 by Benjamin Henry Blackwell, after whom the chain is named, on Broad Street, ...

. It has so far appeared in four editions, published in 1990, 1997, 2005, and 2015. It is designed for

paleontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

graduate courses in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

and

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...

as well as for the interested layman. The book is widely used, and has received excellent reviews: *"This book is a ′must′ for a biology or geology student and researcher concerned by palaeontology. It perfectly succeeds in showing how palaeobiological information is obtained". Review of 3rd edition, ''Zentrallblatt fur Geologie und Palaontologie'', 2007. *"One anticipates that Benton's ''Vertebrate Palaeontology'' will become the 'industry standard', and as such it should occupy space on the shelves of all involved in undergraduate teaching". Ivan Sansom, School of Earth Sciences, University of Birmingham. Review of the 2nd edition for the Micropalaeontological Society. *"... his expertise in a range of problems of vertebrate paleontology is amazing. As a result the contents of his book revery well balanced". Jerzy Dzik, Instytut Palaeobiologii PAN, Warsaw. Review of the 3rd edition for the ''Journal of Sedimentary Research''. The book gives an overall account of every major group of living and fossil vertebrate. At the rear of the book is a

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

classification which combines both the Linnaean hierarchy and the

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...

arrangement, and has been used as a guideline for the Wikipedia pages on living and extinct vertebrate taxa. However, some of Benton's classification differs from that in the

Tree of Life Web Project The Tree of Life Web Project is an Internet project providing information about the diversity and phylogeny of life on Earth. This collaborative peer reviewed project began in 1995, and is written by biologists from around the world. The site h ...

, especially as regards the relationship of early amphibian groups (

Batrachomorpha The Batrachomorpha ("frog forms") are a clade containing recent and extinct amphibians that are more closely related to modern amphibians than they are to mammals and reptiles. According to many analyses they include the extinct Temnospondyli; so ...

and

Reptiliomorpha Reptiliomorpha (meaning reptile-shaped; in PhyloCode known as ''Pan-Amniota'') is a clade containing the amniotes and those tetrapods that share a more recent common ancestor with amniotes than with living amphibians ( lissamphibians). It was de ...

Bibliography

* Benton, M. J. (2005), ''Vertebrate Paleontology'', 3rd ed. Blackwell Science Ltd * Benton, M. J. (1995) ''Paleontología y evolución de los Vertebrados''. Ed. Perfils. . Spanish translation by Aurora Grandal-d'Anglade upon the first edition. * Benton, M. J. (2007), ''Paläontologie der Wirbeltiere'', Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil. German translation by Hans-Ulrich Pfretzschner based upon the third edition.
Publisher's Website and Book Overview

References

Paleontology books {{zoology-book-stub