The literature on Chinese fossil vertebrates is extremely difficult for Western scholars to assimilate and interpret. In part, this is because much of that literature is in Chinese, and few useful reviews exist in Western languages. Yet China has an extensive vertebrate fossil record, one that plays a key role in understanding the evolution of vertebrates. Spencer Lucas gives an up-to-date review and synthesis of the Chinese vertebrate fossil record that will greatly facilitate an understanding of and further research into this outstanding fossil record. The book provides the reader with a comprehensive, chronologically ordered review of China's vertebrate fossil record. It also presents a history of vertebrate paleontological studies in China and an entrée to some important issues of systematics, evolutionary history, paleoecology, taphonomy, and functional anatomy best elucidated by China's fossils. This volume should therefore become an indispensable part of the library of any student of vertebrate evolution. -- Fossil News
