The Rise of Fishes: 500 Million Years of Evolution - Tapa dura

"Anyone wanting an overview of '500 million years of evolution' of fish and aquatic creatures really needs to read this acclaimed text. It is the work of Australian palaeontologist and curator John A. Long, who works at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. This is a second edition incorporating research from the past 15 years. This is not a work of popular science. It is a richly illustrated technical book that will be of interest to anyone wanting to know about fish before they crawled out of the oceans and started the long journey from amphibians to mammals."

"Overall, this second edition comes highly recommended to anyone who has an interest in the diversity and evolution of fishes. It is an excellent read that is both engaging and informative to a broad audience, and this book would be just as comfortable on the coffee table as it would be on the shelf in your office."

"This book is truly an exemplar of the amazing insights we have gained by integrating the comparative anatomical study of living animals with the evidence of the fossil record... The combination of numerous beautiful images with an engaging and well-written text by a research leader in the field makes it exeptional value."

"One could almost take this for a coffee-table book at first glance, so profusely and well is it illustrated... This book is not just a scientific and educational tool; it is also a visual celebration of the glories of biological diversity as seen in the fossil record."

"[Long] enlivens his account with tales from his extensive field work... Exceptionally lucid and comprehensively illustrated."

"A marvelous addition to the literature of vertebrate paleontology."