Robert (‘Bob’) Lynn Carroll is one of the best-known names in vertebrate palaeontology, having written what is the current standard textbook on the subject (Carroll, Reference Carroll1987) as well as a vast number of technical publications, which deal primarily with the evolution and palaeobiology of early tetrapods and the origins of amniotes and lissamphibians. This volume was conceived in recognition of Carroll's extended influence on the subject, both through his writings and through the large number of students and colleagues that he nurtured at his lab in McGill University. A large number of these former associates have stayed in the field and now hold positions in other institutions throughout the world: appropriately, many of them contributed to this volume. The book comprises a series of stand-alone chapters, each of which deals with a particular topic under the broad theme of major events in vertebrate evolutionary history, a subject close to Bob's heart.
The different contributions vary considerably in style, content and scope, making the volume something of a curate's egg: the chapters are arranged in classical scala naturae fashion, starting with fish and early vertebrates and culminating in contributions on mammals. Some of the chapters (such as those by Chiappe & Dyke on bird origins, Luo on Mesozoic mammals and Uhen on whale origins) represent concise, up-to-date and straightforward overviews of particular topics that will be helpful and informative for non-specialists or students, although they provide no new data per se. Other authors extend this approach, providing hefty reviews alongside new syntheses of ideas or possible directions for future research (such as the chapters by Hall & Witten on the development of vertebrate skeletal materials, or Janvier on the phylogeny of jawless fish). The remaining chapters offer less review and more new interpretations or novel data: Anderson's major contribution on tetrapod phylogeny (concentrating on the origin of lissamphibians) is particularly impressive in this regard, and a paper by Wilson and colleagues on the evolution of paired fins in jawless fish is also thought provoking. Many of the chapters include discussion of evo–devo and this is most explicit in the paper by Larsson, who discusses how developmental data can be integrated with phylogenetic data to identify evolutionary novelties. Most of these chapters are likely to be of broad interest to vertebrate morphologists, evolutionary biologists and systematists. The two remaining chapters (by Reisz on diadectid anatomy and Caldwell on snake phylogeny) are the narrowest in scope and it is likely that these will primarily interest colleagues working on the same taxa.
Following from many previous criticisms of the Indiana University Press ‘Life in the Past’ series, it does seem that they have at last invested in some better technology for reproducing figures and photographs: the volume includes some very nice colour plates and the photographs are much better presented than in many of the earlier titles in the series. In summary, this is a useful volume – the individual chapters offer a combination of reviews and important new data that will interest an audience that should extend beyond vertebrate palaeontology to zoologists and evolutionary biologists.
