Treatise of Invertebrate Paleontology. O. Arthropoda 1 Trilobita, Revised (H.B. Whittington et al, 1997)

ISBN 0-8137-3115-1

At last, volume one of the long-awaited update to Moore's 1959 epic. It is difficult to understand the monumental amount of work in one of these volumes of the Treatise without reading through it. Take the chapter on ontogeny, for example. How do we know how a trilobite developed? After all, we can hardly watch one. Only by collecting dozens or hundreds of fossils of each – at first, no doubt, misidentified as different species – and comparing them, across collection, institution, and probably national boundaries: work which may take multiple workers decades. The 530 pages of this volume represents whole lifetimes of dedicated research.

The Treatise is a technical reference for professional palaeontologists so you will want to be a very enthusiastic amateur before you consider buying it. If you are, though, then this is definitely the definitive word on trilobite morphology, habit, ontogeny, evolution and classification available today. It is not a complete systematic review of the whole class, however: This is the first volume of a work which is expected to stretch to three. Systematic descriptions are given for the Agnostida and Redlichiida only.

Readers familiar with the 1959 version will first notice that the familiar line drawings have been almost totally replaced by excellent (at least 600 dpi) photographs of actual fossils. As before, taxonomic descriptions are provided down to generic level, providing authorship, synonymy, diagnostic morphology, type species and provenance.

Recommendation: Recommended.

Look and Feel: Hardcover textbook.

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