62 pages
Published 2003
Read September 29
Rating: 3 out of 5
Earlier this month, my partner R and I visited the Yale Peabody Museum. (It’s free!) I’m currently hyperfocusing on fossil plants and ancient ecosystems, partly because of the novels I’m writing, partly because it’s a dang cool topic. When I found this slim volume in the gift shop, I couldn’t pass it up.
It’s a scientist’s idea of a primer for non-specialists, which means we get thrown into a welter of terminology with only the barest effort to define it. I’m still shaky on the distinction between a wood section’s radial face and its transverse face. One shoddy diagram is considered sufficient explanation; the terms aren’t defined in the glossary. And because the book is over twenty years old, I can only surmise how much of it has been superseded by more recent lines of evidence.
Still, I love paleobotany, and this is a neat appetizer for the more technical books I’ve been pricing in recent weeks. If you ever happen to read my forthcoming paleo-fiction and find a reference to Cretaceous highland meadows of Ephedra plants, you can credit this book.
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