Looking for paleontology books? We have gathered 27 free paleontology books in PDF, covering fossils, dinosaurs, vertebrate and invertebrate life, paleobotany, and the history of life on Earth.
These books show how scientists read the fossil record, one layer of strata at a time. From Georges Cuvier’s first proof that species go extinct to modern excavation reports, the whole method is here.
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Getting Started
Introduction to Paleontology Books
New to the field? Start here with how a fossil forms, how strata get dated, and how Thomas Henry Huxley taught readers to reason from a single bone back to a whole animal.
Fourteen essays on how paleontology reached the public, from Victorian museum halls to Gertie the Dinosaur and Jurassic Park. It shows how the science of deep time turned into popular culture, and what that did back to the science.
A full outline of paleontological science organized by geological period. Nicholson walks the fossil record forward from the Cambrian, explaining what each layer of strata holds and how it is read.
Huxley's popular lectures on evolution, fossils and geologic time, written to be understood without a science degree. His essay on the method of Zadig is still one of the clearest accounts of how a paleontologist reasons from a bone to an animal.
A Victorian narrative of Earth history from the Precambrian to the arrival of humans, written by a working geologist for general readers. Dawson argued against Darwin, so the book also shows how the fossil record was fought over in its own day.
Vertebrate paleontology covers animals with backbones: fish, reptiles, birds and mammals. Georges Cuvier built the field by comparing fossil bones to living animals, and these books carry that method through to modern excavation reports.
The book that founded vertebrate paleontology. Cuvier argues from fossil bones that whole species have vanished, and sets out the comparative anatomy method still used to rebuild extinct animals. This edition adds observations on the geology of North America.
A systematic survey of extinct vertebrates written for zoology students by a keeper of geology at the British Museum. It moves group by group through fossil fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, with anatomical figures throughout.
A museum handbook on how fossils form and what the great extinct vertebrates were actually like. Written by the director of a natural history museum, with restorations by Charles R. Knight.
Thirty large plates of ichthyosaur and plesiosaur skeletons, drawn from specimens Hawkins collected himself. The prose is strange and biblical, but the plates are among the finest ever made of marine reptiles.
The full excavation report from Stanton Harcourt, where mammoth bones and Neanderthal handaxes turned up together in an ancient river channel. It covers the fauna, the flora, the dating and what the site says about interglacial climate.
A modern survey of Sumatran cave faunas, starting from the collections Eugene Dubois made in the 1890s and running to current fieldwork. It covers orangutans, extinct elephants, rhinos and the earliest human presence in the region.
Julien Louys, Paul C. H. Albers and Alexandra A. E. van der Geer
Most of the fossil record is invertebrate: trilobites, brachiopods, bryozoans, graptolites and foraminifera. Four of these volumes come from the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, the 55 volume reference work that is fully free to read.
The supplement volume of the revised brachiopod series, covering the groups added since the earlier volumes plus the anatomy, ecology and biostratigraphy of the phylum. Nearly a thousand pages with hundreds of figures.
Alwyn Williams, C. H. C. Brunton and S. J. Carlson
The Treatise volume on fossil chelicerates: eurypterids, horseshoe crabs, scorpions and spiders, with sections on sea spiders. Systematic descriptions with morphological figures for every genus.
Leif Stormer, Alexander Petrunkevitch and Joel W. Hedgpeth
The Treatise volume on bryozoans, the colonial filter feeders that build lace-like skeletons and turn up all through marine strata. Covers morphology, classification and stratigraphic range genus by genus.
The revised Treatise volume on graptolites, the colonial hemichordates used to date Ordovician and Silurian rocks. Includes sections on acorn worms and pterobranchs, their closest living relatives.
A reference work on the large single-celled organisms that build reefs and date marine basins. It presents revised phylogenies and stratigraphic ranges from the late Paleozoic through the Cenozoic, illustrated with thin sections throughout.
These are dinosaur books for readers who want the science, from the monographs of the Bone Wars to a field account of quarrying in the badlands. Expect osteology, taxonomy and excavation, not activity sheets.
Marsh's monograph on the dinosaurs he named during the Bone Wars, among them Brontosaurus, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and Triceratops. Full osteological descriptions with the skeletal restorations that shaped how dinosaurs have looked ever since.
The book that put dinosaurs in front of the Victorian public, with restorations by Joseph Smit and Alice B. Woodward. It covers dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles and Ice Age mammals in plain language.
A bone by bone study of Stegosaurus built on the museum specimens that still serve as the reference description for the genus. Gilmore also works out how the plates and tail spikes were arranged.
A field account of the seasons Sternberg and his sons spent quarrying duckbilled and horned dinosaurs along the Red Deer River. It is what fossil collecting actually looked like before mechanized excavation.
Found something in a rock and want to know what it is? These guides show you what to look for, with coloured plates and drawings made for collectors rather than specialists.
Coloured plates of fossils drawn from two earlier atlases, with Mantell's descriptions of every specimen. A working reference for anyone trying to put a name to shells, plants and bones found in rock.
A short museum guide to reading the fossil record period by period, from the Precambrian to the arrival of humans. It explains fossilization, geologic time and the main fossil groups without assuming any background.
The formations volume of a handbook written for collectors, walking through the rock units period by period and listing the fossils each one yields. Goldring wrote it for people with a hammer and no formal training.
A classroom guide to fossils, with activities on how body fossils form, how trace fossils work, how fossils get dated and how extinction events are read. Each activity comes with a handout you can print.
National Park Service and American Geosciences Institute
Plants fossilize too, and paleobotany reads them for the climate of their time. These books cover Carboniferous coal swamps, the Glossopteris flora that first argued for continental drift, and the pollen record.
The standard introduction to fossil plants for its generation, covering in detail the ferns and seed plants of the Carboniferous coal swamps. Scott explains what petrified plant tissue reveals about how the groups are related.
Papers built on the African Pollen Database, reconstructing how vegetation shifted across the continent through the last glacial cycle. It shows how pollen cores are used to rebuild past climates.
A monograph on the Permo-Carboniferous flora that grew across the southern continents, based on a museum collection. The distribution of these plants became one of the first arguments for continental drift.
Seward's descriptions of the algae, fungi and ferns of the Wealden beds, with eleven plates. A close look at what the landscape around the early Cretaceous dinosaurs actually grew.
Paleontology is one of the few sciences where an amateur can still find something that matters. A lot of these books were written to help exactly that person.
Want dinosaur coloring books and activity sheets instead? Those live in our dinosaur books for kids section.
For more on how life on Earth changed across geologic time, browse our Biology Books category.
