vertebrate paleontology third edition

[...]... online, and find out more CHAPTER 1 Vertebrate Origin 2 Vertebrate Origin KEY QUESTIONS IN THIS CHAPTER Plants 1 What are the closest living relatives of vertebrates? 2 When did deuterostomes and chordates originate? 3 What are the key characters of chordates? 4 How do extraordinary new fossil discoveries from China help us understand the ancestry of vertebrates? INTRODUCTION Vertebrates are all the animals... the vertebrates 1.5 VERTEBRATES AND THE HEAD The vertebrates, the major group of chordates, form the subject of this book They have sometimes been termed craniates since all forms, including the hag- fishes and lampreys, have specialized head features (the cranium, the skull) The term vertebrate is better known, so will be used here, following recommendations by Donoghue et al (1998) The basic vertebrate. .. be linked to provide an overview of the vertebrate tree of life, and this is replicated in the classification (Appendix) I am indebted to many people I thank Roger Jones and Clem Earle of Unwin Hyman who commissioned the first edition, and Ward Cooper of Chapman & Hall who steered the second edition through The following people read parts of the first and second editions, or made other valuable contributions:... account of what is known about the history of vertebrates, but also for a summary of the latest of these exciting discoveries The first edition was published in 1990 The second edition, substantially modified, appeared in 1997 It offered extensive coverage of the new discoveries of the early 1990s, as well as comprehensive cladistic coverage of the main vertebrate clades Since 1990, the book has hopped... that most typical of vertebrate organ systems, the skeleton, has its gene and morphological precursors in amphioxus Most importantly, amphioxus shares embryonic cells that are homologous with the neural crest of vertebrates The neural crest was thought to be a unique developmental feature of vertebrates, and indeed it is a developmental precursor of virtually all the distinctive vertebrate characters... y evolución de los vertebrados, Edition Perfils, Lleida) and the second in Italian in 2000 (Paleontologia dei Vertebrati, Franco Lucisano Editore, Milano), and a German edition is in progress This is a measure of the international appeal of vertebrate palaeontology and the demand from students and instructors for up-todate information The story of the evolution of the vertebrates, the animals with backbones,... Deuterostomia (echinoderms, hemichordates and chordates) The origin of vertebrates has long been a profound mystery, but now some clarity is emerging The purpose of this chapter is to explore the various lines of evidence that can be used to reconstruct the story of the origin of the vertebrates: the study of modern animals that are vertebrate- like in some features, the study of molecular relationships,... swelling, has counterparts of the vertebrate forebrain and hindbrain Expression of the genes Pax-1, Pax-2/5/8 and Brachyury homologues has supported the homologies of amphioxus and vertebrate gill slits and notochord So even though amphioxus adults have a very simple brain, and simple sense organs (the ‘eye spot’), the genes are shared, and phylogenetic precursors of vertebrate brain regions, eyes, and... †Bob Savage, Pascal Tassy, Paul Sereno, Glen Storrs, Mike Taylor, Nigel Trewin, David Unwin, Cyril Walker, Peter Wellnhofer and Bernard Wood For the third edition, I thank Phil Donoghue and Kevin Padian for their helpful advice on how to update the second edition, as well as Kenneth Angielczyk, David Archibald, David Berman, Jenny Clack, Mike Coates, Joel Cracraft, Phil Donoghue, Gareth Dyke, Andrzej... acquired by Chapman & Hall, so the first edition appeared under three publishers’ logos, in 1990, 1991 and 1995 The second edition appeared with Chapman & Hall, but they were then taken over by Kluwer, and this book was marketed by their Stanley Thornes subsidiary for a while, before passing to Blackwell Science in 2000 I hope these wandering days are now over The first edition appeared in Spanish in 1995 . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h1" alt="" VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY Dedicated to Mary, Philippa and Donald for their forebearance while I wrote this book. VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY Third edition MICHAEL J. BENTON Department. publisher. First published 1990 by Unwin Hyman Second edition 1997 by Chapman & Hall Reprinted 2000,2002, 2003 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Third edition 2005 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication. origins 7 1.5 Vertebrates and the head 14 1.6 Further reading 15 2 HOW TO STUDY FOSSIL VERTEBRATES 16 Key questions 17 Introduction 17 2.1 Digging up bones 17 2.2 Geology and fossil vertebrates