Vertebrate Life

by F. Harvey Pough, John B. Heiser, Christine M. Janis

Book Overview

Vertebrate Life distills the necessary information from vertebrate anatomy, physiology, ecology, and behavioral studies and then helps students see important connections across levels of biological... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321773365
• ISBN13: 9780321773364
• Release Date: September 2012
• Publisher: Pearson
• Length: 720 Pages
• Weight: 3.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 8.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

M. Karrr. Please take a moment TO THINK!

M. Karr. Sigh..... Are you so dense that you would damage the efforts of gifted academics such as Ms. Janis because you have an issue with the publisher? I mean, do you think that Ms. Janis is actively consulted in their ostensibly heinous marketing maneuvers? Have you ever considered that a good book might be owned by a greedy publisher?

Enthusiastically recommended as a college-level text.

Vertebrate Life would serve as an excellent upper-level college textbook to anyone interested in becoming informed about vertebrates. Professionally, I am a physicist, who after visiting the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Vertebrates, wanted to learn more about the subject. Even after reading Vertebrate Life, I don't think that I could point out the squamate bone on a fossilized skull. On the other hand, with 733 pages, it is unfair to critize this book about a lack of coverage! The authors provide several pages of excellent references at the end of each chapter. So, if I really wanted to be able to identify a squamate bone, I'm sure that I could have found out from one of references. However, I was troubled by a number of typos, some of the them serious. Figure 15-3 appears to have the second half of the figure repeated as the first half. It would have been nice to see missing illustrations. Figure 3-6b identifies the Otic capsule as "Optic capsule" at one point. This confused me for a while. Even with all this, I was fascinated by what I read, and read the entire book, cover to cover, all 733 pages worth. For the serious student of our natural world, I would recommend spending full price for this book, and plan on spending more than a few hours with it.