Whilst there seems to be an open season on the Ediacarans at the moment, The Rise of Animals is a volume that many palaeontologists will, I suspect, want to own. Beautifully illustrated with innumerable photos of the fossils, plus and diagrams and maps, it is a pleasure to look at and read.

The first part gives a succinct but well illustrated geological and biological background to the Archaean and Proterozoic. It is part two that forms the bulk of the book, with a tour of the main Neoproterozoic fossiliferous localities from the classic and now well-known sites in Newfoundland, Namibia, Australia and the White Sea to Podolia, Siberia, the Urals and Canadian Cordillera to the ‘also rans’ such as Charnwood, Carmarthen, etc. For any student of the Ediacaran biota this part provides an invaluable introduction to the major sites, each of which has about 30 pages, summarizing and illustrating the present state of knowledge.

Parts three and four, ‘Other Evidence of Animals’ and ‘The Cambrian “Explosion”’, deal with topics such as trace fossils, body plans, etc., and finally there is an ‘Atlas of Precambrian Metazoans’ whose title spells out the biological stance of the authors towards the Ediacarans. However, this Atlas catalogues, describes and illustrates the holotypes of most of the presently known 200 or so Ediacaran species from around the world. This section alone is of enormous value in bringing such otherwise scattered information together.

The quality of the illustrations with full use of colour is superb and the authors have performed a great service in searching out unfamiliar material and bringing all together in this single work.