Rating: 
Summary: Excellent informative reference!
Review: This exemplary book is one of the few that provides detailed maps of the changes in the Earth's landmasses as well as chronicling the evolution of its life-forms. The opening section includes 36 pages of full-color, chronologically arranged maps. Outlines of current continents overlay those of the prehistoric landmasses, allowing readers to see how they have moved and changed over time. Commentary on individual maps and information on how to read them is included. The second section examines each geological era and time period, and includes many color photographs, reproductions, and drawings depicting their life-forms and habitats. Detailed captions and sidebars provide additional information. The final section, illustrated with black-and-white photos, reproductions, and maps, covers "Earth History," "Earth Processes" (including volcanoes), and "Fossils." Paragraph-length biographies of noted paleontologists and geologists, and a list of museums and Web sites to visit are appended. For its price, this is the best atlas of Laurentia and Gondwana around.
Rating:
Summary: Cut well above the average
Review: This is an excellent buy for natural science enthusiasts. It has been arranged in splended fashion, with large scale maps, great illustrations, and more and less detailed sections of text-depending on the tastes of the reader, in different sections of the book. It contains beautifully coloured palaeogeographic maps of the contintents (eg if you are one of those people who likes to know where Alaska was on the earth 250 million years ago), and a fairly detailed notes and reference section at the back, where historical outlines, scientific debates, stories, glossary, biological, and other technical information is discussed. There is descriptions throughout of famous fossils, fossil sites, major historic finds, scientific debates, the origin of life, the Burgess Shale, the ediacra fauna, the Cambrian explosion, dinosaurs, mammals and their origins, birds and their evolution, the K-T and other mass extinction events,the rise of the hominids, the ice ages, and so on. The authors have done a really 1st class job in packing in so much information, arranged in a way that can be understood and perused according to the tastes of the reader. Not to mention the fantastic illustrations/and or real photographs-from in situ-stegosaur fossil finds, to early Cambrian Hallucegenia, to T rex skeletons, to giant kangaroos, to mammoths being dug out of the Russian steppes, to Mongolian dinosaur eggs, to Hominid illustrations on the African savannah. A fantastic book, one well above the average 'atlas'-type compilation, for both scientists and the general reader.
Rating:
Summary: Cut well above the average
Review: This is an excellent buy for natural science enthusiasts. It has been arranged in splended fashion, with large scale maps, great illustrations, and more and less detailed sections of text-depending on the tastes of the reader, in different sections of the book. It contains beautifully coloured palaeogeographic maps of the contintents (eg if you are one of those people who likes to know where Alaska was on the earth 250 million years ago), and a fairly detailed notes and reference section at the back, where historical outlines, scientific debates, stories, glossary, biological, and other technical information is discussed. There is descriptions throughout of famous fossils, fossil sites, major historic finds, scientific debates, the origin of life, the Burgess Shale, the ediacra fauna, the Cambrian explosion, dinosaurs, mammals and their origins, birds and their evolution, the K-T and other mass extinction events,the rise of the hominids, the ice ages, and so on. The authors have done a really 1st class job in packing in so much information, arranged in a way that can be understood and perused according to the tastes of the reader. Not to mention the fantastic illustrations/and or real photographs-from in situ-stegosaur fossil finds, to early Cambrian Hallucegenia, to T rex skeletons, to giant kangaroos, to mammoths being dug out of the Russian steppes, to Mongolian dinosaur eggs, to Hominid illustrations on the African savannah. A fantastic book, one well above the average 'atlas'-type compilation, for both scientists and the general reader.
Rating: 
Summary: The Book With Two Uses
Review: You can use this book as a very basic means to learn some interesting basic paleontology (really, folks, that's not a word that should be associated with boredom). Or, use it as I do as an excellent reference tool. The book begins with almost fifty pages of global maps showing the position of the continents and the condition of earth from Precambrian times to the present. Most of the rest of the book is devoted to picturing and describing life forms during the same periods. Chapters at the end of the book deal with plate tectonics, types of rock, fossils and dating techniques and many other appropriate subjects. And yes, dinosaur fans, there is a section on the K-T boundary, that period 65 million years ago when the Chicxulub meteorite ended their reign. I'm currently reading a book on oceanography, in which the author describes a late Cambrian creature called Hallucigenia which had stiff spikes on one side and flexible appendages on the other side. The creature was so strange that for a long time scientists could not determine which sides were top or bottom. There was no picture of this oddity in my oceanography book, and being very curious about Hallucigenia's appearance I grabbed my Atlas of the Prehistoric world. Sure enough, there was a good picture of the fossil. The atlas is packed with fossil photos and artistic renderings of what these creatures probably looked like. Paper quality and layout are excellent, and I like the fact that each section is presented by earth's ages. Trying to remember just what the Devonian period is famous for? Finding the answer (it is fish) is easy.
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