Kadimakara: Extinct Vertebrates of Australia - Tapa dura

According to the traditions of some Australian Aborigines, the strange monsters known as "Kadimakara" once lived in a "roof" of vegetation over Central Australia, occasionally foraging for foods in the "lower" world. These Aborigines believed that on one occasion, when the Kadimakara's path back to their home was cut off, they were obliged to roam on earth until they died in Lake Eyre. Their bones, the Aborigines thought, became what we know as fossils. In the richly illustrated volume Kadimakara, pioneers of the bourgeoning field of Australian fossil research provide a broad overview of vertebrate history in that country. Offering a wealth of information on how palaeontologists view their own processes of interpreting what fossil animals and plants were like when alive, the book includes an essay for each of thirty-two extinct vertebrates. The work begins with an engagingly written chapter "Priest-Geologists and Knighted Explorers: A Short History of the Discovery of Vertebrate Fossils in Australia" by P. V. Rich, continues with an essay "The Stirton Years, 1953-1966" by R. H. Tedford, and goes on to a discussion of changing Australian environments throughout geological time by E. M. Truswell and G. E. Wilford. The essays on fossil vertebrates constitute the remaining two-thirds of the book.