Atlas of the Prehistoric World

by Douglas Palmer

Book Overview

From it's beginnings as an accumulation of molten space debris over 4.6 billion years ago, the Earth has undergone astounding transformations, both geological and biological, to arrive at its familiar... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1563318296
• ISBN13: 9781563318290
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 9.4" x 11.7"

Customer Reviews

Atlas of the Prehistoric World

Atlas of the Prehistoric World written by Douglas Palmer is a Discovery Channel book that is colorfully, highly illustrated book that takes us on a short 4.6 billion year tour of the earth and is life forms. From the earliest time when the earth had nothing on it to today where man is the dominant species living.Reading this book you'll find out how mountain ranges form, how volcaoes erupt, how the continents splits apart, how meteorites crashed into the earth and how life was affected. There is a lot of information inside these pages and it is easily assimilated.The book is divided into three major sections making each time period distinctive in its own right. First is "The Changing Globe" where we see how the earth changed throughout time. The shifting topography is highly illustrative as we see the geology change with time. Taking us from Vendian Times to the Quaternary Times though all times with colorful computer generated snapshots.Next the section of "Ancient Worlds" takes us from Aquatic Microbes: Life begins to the end of the ice age. This is where you'll find out about not only dinosaurs but early mammals to humans. The next section is the "Earth Fact File" where you'll find out how the people who look into the past find and get their information about the past and bring it to life for us to read about.This book has some excellent short biographies of the people in history who started putting this information together, also there is a listing of websites to visit, making this book a good sourse for futher information. There is a further reading list so you can extend your reading about the information in this book and of course there is a glossary that explains the terminology used within the text of the book.This is an excellent book to learn about earth's past and it is worthy of your reference library.

Excellent informative reference

This book has it all: the physical history of the earth as the continents moved about the planet and the evolution of life (the rise and fall of all sorts of species of animals). It's up to date and has copious (and beautiful) illustrations and diagrams.Geology and palentology buffs will enjoy owning it.

An unparalleled view into deep time

For anyone with an interest in paleontology, this book is very good. For anyone with an interest in paleogeography, the book is indispensible and a treasure. The 50 pages of maps, while assuredly based in some part on learned conjecture, provide an unmatchable sense of the history of drifting continents and where these may have been located at various points in deep time. For example, one can view the formations in the Colorado Plateau, and read innumerable treatises on them, but only when this book illustrates where North America was during the Triassic and Jurassic periods does the arrangement and appearance of rock beds in such places as Zion and Capitol Reef National Parks make easy sense. Even absent any other reason, if you are reading this review, you owe it to yourself to buy this book.

Cut well above the average

This is an excellent buy for natural science enthusiasts. It has been arranged in splended fashion, with large scale maps, great illustrations, and more and less detailed sections of text-depending on the tastes of the reader, in different sections of the book. It contains beautifully coloured palaeogeographic maps of the contintents (eg if you are one of those people who likes to know where Alaska was on the earth 250 million years ago), and a fairly detailed notes and reference section at the back, where historical outlines, scientific debates, stories, glossary, biological, and other technical information is discussed. There is descriptions throughout of famous fossils, fossil sites, major historic finds, scientific debates, the origin of life, the Burgess Shale, the ediacra fauna, the Cambrian explosion, dinosaurs, mammals and their origins, birds and their evolution, the K-T and other mass extinction events,the rise of the hominids, the ice ages, and so on. The authors have done a really 1st class job in packing in so much information, arranged in a way that can be understood and perused according to the tastes of the reader. Not to mention the fantastic illustrations/and or real photographs-from in situ-stegosaur fossil finds, to early Cambrian Hallucegenia, to T rex skeletons, to giant kangaroos, to mammoths being dug out of the Russian steppes, to Mongolian dinosaur eggs, to Hominid illustrations on the African savannah. A fantastic book, one well above the average 'atlas'-type compilation, for both scientists and the general reader.

Facinating Reading!

I bought this book as a layperson without much knowledge of prehistoric geology. This book is fairly simple to understand without using alot of "big words". It is made for easier reading as a reference guide into prehistoric geology and paleobiology. I found it to be a great guide if you are interested in geology and prehistory. The book takes you through each time period in the geologic time scale from the Precambrian up to the Pleistocene period. Then after the geological periods it gives a little background on physical geology. There is alot of colorful pictures and illustrations to guide you along with the text. This is a very interesting book that I recommend if you are interested in this type of reading. Another hit for the Discovery Channel!