Fossil Fever

Jeff’s Uncle Roy runs a museum. That means he’s always zooming off to strange places to find ruins and treasure. But Jeff has never gone along—until now. They’re headed to the Sahara desert to search for dinosaur fossils. And Jeff knows he’ll find the bones of the biggest meat-eater ever! “The subject’s popularity, and Bogan’s colorful cartoon-style illustrations will attract beginning readers.”—Booklist

Fossils are our key to the far past. Remains or even just traces of life from earlier eras have allowed us to reconstruct various times and places far different from our modern period. The most famous, perhaps, are those fossils that dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures left behind. In this high-interest volume, readers will gain an understanding of different kinds of fossils as well as how scientists locate and uncover them. Eye-popping pictures, succinct fact boxes, and enlightening captions make this beautifully designed book a standout. Future paleontologists will find their curiosity piqued about what fossils are under their own feet!

In this long-awaited sequel Kirk Johnson and Ray Troll are back on a road trip—driving, flying, and boating their way from Baja, California to northern Alaska in search of the fossil secrets of North America's Pacific coast. They hunt for fossils, visit museums, meet scientists and paleonerds, and sleuth out untold stories of extinct worlds. As one of the oldest coasts on earth, the west coast is a rich ground for fossil discovery. Its wonders include extinct marine mammals, pygmy mammoths, oyster bears, immense ammonites, shark-bitten camels, polar dinosaurs, Alaskan palms, California walruses, and a lava-baked rhinoceros. Join in for a fossil journey through deep time and discover how the west coast became the place it is today.

A lovely and loving piece of work, both an introduction to the hobby of fossil collecting and a beautifully illustrated field guide, with the author's drawings of some 450 fossil specimens and descriptions of 46 specific sites in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia where they can be found. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Complete beginner's guide, with vertebrate and invertebrate fossil descriptions.

Internationally bestselling author and renowned scientist Tim Flannery and his daughter, scientist Emma Flannery, delivers an informative-yet-intimate portrait of the megalodon, an extinct shark and the largest predator of all time When Tim Flannery was a boy he found a fossilized tooth of the giant shark megalodon at a beach near his home in Australia. This remarkable find—the tooth was large enough to cover his palm—sparked an interest in paleontology that was to inform his life’s work and a lifelong quest to uncover the secrets of the great shark Otodus megalodon. Tim passed on his love of the natural world and interest in the fossil record to his daughter, Emma, a scientist and writer. And now, together, they have written a fascinating account of this ancient marine creature. Big Meg charts the evolution of megalodon, its super-predator status for about fifteen million years and its decline and extinction. It delves into the fossil record to answer questions about its behavior and role in shaping marine ecosystems as well as its impact on the human psyche. It contains stories of the scientist and amateur fossil hunters who have scoured the seas, and land, for fossil remains, drawn to the beauty and mystique of the great shark, sometimes meeting their death in the process. Deemed “in the league of the all-time great explorers” by David Attenborough, Tim Flannery has come together with Emma Flannery to spin a story of the great natural history of our planet as enthralling as the fossil record itself.

“This lively and fascinating book is an intelligent examination of how scientific endeavor operates over time and how community life can be focused and energized. It’s also filled with portraits of colorful personalities.”—Florida Weekly "A fascinating recounting of the early discovery of a Paleolithic human and the issues that were engendered by various opposing scientific views of the validity of the discovery and its analysis."--Dennis Stanford, coauthor of Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture "Since the site's discovery long ago, the complete story of the Old Vero Site has never been told. This is an informative and entertaining account of this remarkable site and its history in American archaeology."--Thomas D. Dillehay, author of The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory "Johnson has thoroughly investigated, and transformed into a very readable narrative, an entire century of accumulated knowledge about the research, controversy, and curiosity surrounding the Old Vero archaeological site."--Barbara A. Purdy, author of Florida's People During the Last Ice Age "An engaging account of the first Paleoindian site discovered in eastern North America."--Robert S. Carr, author of Digging Miami "Johnson skillfully weaves a tale of prehistoric life in Florida with the 100-year search to understand that long lost world at the Vero Site."--Andy Hemmings, Florida Atlantic University In 1916, to the shock of the scientific community and the world at large, a Florida geologist discovered human remains mixed with the bones of prehistoric animals in a Vero Beach canal and proclaimed that humans had lived in North America since the Ice Age. These new findings by Elias Sellards flew in the face of prevailing wisdom, which held that humans first came to the continent only 6,000 years ago. His claim was snubbed by the top scientists of his day, he was laughed out of the state, Vero's fame declined, and the skull Sellards found--famously known as "Vero Man "--was lost. An Ice Age Mystery tells the story of Sellards's exciting find and the controversy it sparked. In the years that followed, other archaeological discoveries and the rise of radiocarbon dating established that humans did arrive in North America earlier than previously thought. The skull, however, was never recovered, and many people began to wonder: What exactly had Sellards found at Vero? And what else might be buried there? One hundred years after the first Vero discovery, construction plans threatened to cover up the legendary dig site, and a band of citizens and archaeologists protested. Excavations were reopened. Archaeologists uncovered 14,000-year-old burnt mammal bones and charcoal, signs of a human presence, and found further evidence to indicate a continuous human occupation of the site for several thousand years. Prior to the latest excavations an etching on a bone possibly 13,000 years old was discovered that could be the oldest piece of art in America. Sellards had been right all along. Many questions still remain. Who were these people? Where did they come from? And how did they get here? This book draws readers into the past, present, and future of one of the most historic discoveries in American archaeology.