Palaeontology in Public: Popular Science, Lost Creatures and Deep Time

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.

H. Alleyne Nicholson

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.

Thomas Henry Huxley

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.

John William Dawson