I suspect that many institutions will lack the wherewithal for a subscription to Progress in Natural Science. However, librarians (and individual scientists) may wish to purchase this special issue, available on its own at a reasonable price, for the wealth of information on Jurassic stratigraphy, environments and biotas that it contains.

There are three ‘general’ papers: a preface to the issue and outline of IGCP 506 (Sha et al.); a review of Jurassic chronostratigraphic units (Morton); and a synopsis of new and existing isotopic data from Jurassic (and Cretaceous) cephalopods, interpreted largely in terms of global climate change (Zakharov et al.). Of the remaining 27 studies, 23 have a locus in south and east Asia (India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, far-eastern Russia and China, with fully 16 papers devoted to the last country). The results are usually interpreted within a larger geographic context so there is a good deal to interest Jurassic workers based elsewhere. British Jurassic researchers, familiar only with non-marine facies from the mid- and uppermost parts of the system, will be fascinated by the descriptions of non-marine sediments and biotas from other horizons; for example in Xinjiang province, NW China, there is a thick and almost complete Jurassic sequence entirely in non-marine facies (Shi et al.). Fully 11 papers, however, deal with mid-Jurassic non-marine environments and biotas, greatly enlarging existing knowledge of this interval. Fossil preservation is generally very good, and sometimes exceptional, allowing determination of the internal structure (Wang et al.; Zhang et al.), organic geochemistry (Sun et al.), and stomatal density and carbon-isotopic composition (Xie et al.) of plant material, these in turn enabling detailed inferences concerning taxonomic affinities and physiology, palaeoclimate, atmospheric composition and the source material for hydrocarbon accumulations. There are also examples of exceptionally preserved mid-Jurassic, non-marine animals, notably the abundant fossils of the Daohugou fauna (Inner Mongolia, China), which rivals the early Cretaceous Jehol fauna of the same area in its diversity and exquisiteness of soft-part preservation (Huang et al.; Tan & Ren).

The standard of English in all papers is very high, thanks in significant measure to the editorial efforts of Dr Susan Turner (Queensland Museum). The illustrations, a fair number of which are in colour, are also generally of very good quality; in just a few cases (e.g. Meesook et al.) reproduction of some fossil photographs and mid- to long-range field shots has been at too small a size for details to be discernible. Hopefully, the high standard of science and presentation will stimulate Jurassic researchers from outside Asia (very few of whom are represented in this issue) to become involved in future IGCP 506 meetings (events are planned in North America and Britain) and to contribute to similar collections of up-to-date regional information and global syntheses.