Table of Contents

Foreword: Why People Do Not Accept Evolution
To the Reader: Is Evolution a Threat to Your Religious Beliefs?
Prologue: Fossils and Evolution
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Part I: Evolution and the Fossil Record
1. The Nature of Science
2. Science and Creationism
3. The Fossil Record
4. The Evolution of Evolution
5. Systematics and Evolution
Part II: Evolution? The Fossils say YES!
6. Life’s Origins
7. Cambrian “Explosion”—or Slow Fuse?
8. Spineless Wonders of Evolution
9. Fish Tales
10. Fish Out of Water
11. Onto the Land and Back to the Sea: The Amniotes
12. Dinosaurs Evolve—and Fly
13. Mammalian Explosion
14. Bossies and Blowholes
15. The Ape’s Reflection?
16. Why Does It Matter?
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Donald R. Prothero has taught college paleontology and geology for almost four decades at the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Occidental College, Vassar College, and Knox College. He is adjunct professor of geological sciences at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, adjunct professor of astronomy and earth sciences at Mt. San Antonio College, and research associate in vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. His Columbia University Press books include The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution (2015) and Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (2013).

Reviews

If you're one of these people who likes to read Dawkins, Gould and Darwin, I would highly recommend this book. If you doubted that evolution was true before, and then you looked at this book, I don't see how you could possibly continue to question it. -- Jerry Coyne, author of Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible