"52 More Things You Should Know About Palaeontology" by Alex Callum & Allard Martinius

Publisher:[Mahone Bay] Nova Scotia : Agile Libre, 2017.
ISBN: 9780987959478
0987959476
Characteristics: 135 pages :,illustrations, map.
Additional Contributors: Cullum, Alex 1969-
Martinius, Allard W. 1963-

The book as the title suggests is the second volume of a series of scientific papers that explain the world of palaeontology. As I wrote in my review of the first volume I came across these books by shear chance when I was looking for books about palaeontology for young people - a quest I'm still on by the way.

Once again in this volume we have 52 papers, but in this case they explore the science by going on a journey through time and looking at the animal kingdom and how palaeogeography has given people insight on what the world was like, and how these facts were discovered. In addition they deal with topics such as conservation, curation, laboratory work, and much more. All of the contributors to this volume are outstanding authors with the ability to explain difficult concepts in easy to understand terms.

Here's hoping the editors consider doing another 52 reasons!

As I mentioned before I work in the field of palaeontology myself and give tours of our lab at the University of Alberta (in Edmonton) to school groups and other visitors. It is a shame that the educational curriculum in Alberta doesn't support the teaching palaeontology past about 5th grade. Why this is I've never found out, even though I've asked numerous people in the profession. You would think that considering that Alberta has the riches fossil collections in Canada that this would be something to consider.

"52 Things You Should Know About Palaeontology" edited by Alex Callum & Allard W. Martinius

Publisher:[Mahone Bay] Nova Scotia : Agile Libre, 2015.
ISBN: 9780987959447
Characteristics: 137 pages :,illustrations, map ;,23 cm.
Additional Contributors:Martinius, Allard W. 1963-
Cullum, Alex 1969-

When I first came across this title*, I was doing some research for a book on palaeontology, it's historical roots and interaction with anthropology. It looked interesting, and based solely on the title I assumed it was a book directed towards young people (which my research was sorely lacking at the time). When I finally got my hands on a copy I was both a little sad that this wasn't what it was about, but also very much happier when I read the table of contents and found out that this was a compilation of 52 short papers by leading palaeontologists and others in the field from around the world describing their work.

This book gives the reader a basic introduction to the basic science of palaeontology, it's history, and many other related topics. Each of the papers is two pages long, and should whet your appetite to look into the subject areas in more detail.

The various papers in this book touch on the fundamentals of palaeontology, its biology, applying what is learned, teaching the science, stratigraphy, methodology, fossils, and culture with a given paper typically talking about more than one of these subject areas and showing how they all interrelate.

As someone who works in the field and gives tours to school groups and other visitors to our lab (University of Alberta) I believe this book would be quite a valuable resource to any high school library, public library, college or university as it is very complete.

The authors have also published a follow-up to this book entitled "52 More things You Should Know About Palaeontology" which I have yet to read, but will be doing so shortly.

*  Kudos to the editors by the way for spelling palaeontology correctly - this is one of my nit-picky complaints as the people who work with me can attest to.