Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-gr6zb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-14T22:58:21.471Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2017

Robert M. Schoch
Robert M. Schoch*
Affiliation:
Division of Science and Mathematics, College of General Studies, Boston University, 871 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For over two hundred years the subject of vertebrate paleontology—the study of ancient vertebrates (animals with backbones) and their nearest relatives—has been popular among the lay public. Everyone seems to have a certain fascination with gigantic bones of extinct animals, be they mastodons or dinosaurs. The discovery of a “new” early hominid skull that bears on the evolution of humans can still make front-page headlines around the globe. In a very real sense, the field of vertebrate paleontology has helped shape the way that modern humans think about themselves and the world around them. Vertebrate paleontology, in a literal sense, has helped elucidate humankind's place in nature, especially within the larger context of life on planet Earth through the last four billion years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Short Courses in Paleontology , Volume 7: Major Features of Vertebrate Evolution , 1994 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Paleontological Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

[Since the preceding paper is a fairly generalized, nontechnical discussion intended for the nonspecialist, I purposefully did not cite many references in the text. By consulting the following works, and in turn the works that they cite, the interested reader can delve much more deeply into the history and subject matter of vertebrate paleontology in general, and contributions of the field to evolutionary theory in particular. Schoch, 1984, reprints a number of classic papers in vertebrate paleontology.] Google Scholar
Asimov, I. 1964. Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 662 p.Google Scholar
Bowler, P. J. 1984. Evolution: The History of an Idea. University of California Press, Berkeley, 412 p.Google Scholar
Bowler, P. J. 1992. The Norton History of the Environmental Sciences. W. W. Norton, New York, 634 p.Google Scholar
Carroll, R. L. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. W. H. Freeman, New York, 698 p.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. John Murray, London. [Reprinted many times, including the New American Library edition, New York, 1958, 479 p.].Google Scholar
Debus, A. G. (ed.) 1968. World Who's Who in Science. Marquis-Who's Who, Chicago, 1855 p.Google Scholar
Dobzhansky, T. 1970. Genetics and the Evolutionary Process. Columbia University Press, New York, 505 p.Google Scholar
Gregory, J. T. 1979. North American vertebrate paleontology, 1776–1976, p. 305–335. In Schneer, C. J. (ed.), Two Hundred Years of Geology in America: Proceedings of the New Hampshire Bicentennial Conference on the History of Geology. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire.Google Scholar
Gregory, J. T. 1979. Vertebrate paleontology, p. 843–851. In Fairbridge, R. W. and Jablonski, D. (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Paleontology. Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, W. K. 1951. Evolution Emerging: A Survey of Changing Patterns from Primeval Life to Man. Macmillan, New York, 2. vols., 736 p. in vol. 1; 1013 p. in vol. 2.Google Scholar
Huxley, J. 1942. Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. [1943 edition, Harper and Brothers, New York, 645 p.].Google Scholar
Jepsen, G. L., Mayr, E., and Simpson, G. G. (eds.), 1949. Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 474 p.Google Scholar
Lamarck, J. B. 1984. Zoological Philosophy: An Exposition with Regard to the Natural History of Animals (English translation by Hugh Elliot of Philosophic Zoologique, 1809). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 453 p.Google Scholar
MacFadden, B. J. 1992. Fossil Horses: Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family Equidae. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U. K., 369 p.Google Scholar
Matthew, W. D. 1915. Climate and Evolution. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 24: 171–318.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. 1982. The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 974 p.Google Scholar
Merrill, G. P. 1924. The First Hundred Years of American Geology. Yale University Press, New Haven, 773 p.Google Scholar
Olson, E. C. 1986. Memorial to George Gaylord Simpson, 1902–1984. Memorials of the Geological Society of America, 16: 1–4.Google Scholar
Osborn, H. F. 1929. The Titanotheres of Ancient Wyoming, Dakota, and Nebraska. U. S. Geological Survey Monograph 55, Washington, D. C., 2 vols., 953 p.Google Scholar
Rainger, R. 1988. Vertebrate paleontology as biology: Henry Fairfield Osborn and the American Museum of Natural History, p. 219–256. In Rainger, R., Benson, K. R., and Maienschein, J., (eds.), The American Development of Biology. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Romer, A. S. 1941. Vertebrate paleontology, p. 105–135. In Berkey, C. P. (ed.), Geology, 1888–1938: Fiftieth Anniversary Volume. Geological Society of America, Boulder.Google Scholar
Rudwick, M. J. S. 1976. The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology (2nd edition). Neale Watson Academic Publications, New York, 287 p.Google Scholar
Rudwick, M. J. S. 1992. Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 280 p.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoch, R. M. (ed.), 1984. Vertebrate Paleontology. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 363 p. [This volume reprints many classic papers in vertebrate paleontology, including works by Cuvier, Owen, Marsh, Cope, Gregory, Osborn, and other researchers. It also includes editorial comments on the development of vertebrate paleontology along with an extensive list of references.] Google Scholar
Schoch, R. M. 1986. Phylogeny Reconstruction in Paleontology. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 353 p.Google Scholar
Schoch, R. M. 1989. Stratigraphy: Principles and Methods. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 375 p.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1944 [1984 edition]. Tempo and Mode in Evolution. Columbia University Press, New York, 237 p.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1945. The Principles of Classification and a Classification of Mammals. American Museum of Natural History Bulletin, 85: 1–350.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1949. The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man. Yale University Press, New Haven, 364 p.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1951. Horses: The Story of the Horse Family in the Modern World and through Sixty Million Years of History. Oxford University Press, New York, 247 p.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1953. The Major Features of Evolution. Columbia University Press, New York, 434 p.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1980. Why and How: Some Problems and Methods in Historical Biology. Pergamon Press, Oxford, 263 p.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G., and Roe, A., 1939. Quantitative Zoology: Numerical Concepts and Methods in the Study of Recent and Fossil Animals. McGraw-Hill, New York, 414 p.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G., Roe, A., and Lewontin, R. 1960. Quantitative Zoology (revised edition). Harcourt Brace, New York, 440 p.Google Scholar
Zittel, K. A. von. 1901. History of Geology and Palaeontology to the End of the Nineteenth Century. Walter Scott, London, 562 p.Google Scholar