Principles Of Invertebrate Paleontology 2Ed

This work deals with the invertebrate life of the past, as that life is revealed in the fossil record, and is so organized that it can be used for either undergraduate or graduate instruction. In this work twenty-two major divisions (phyla) of invertebrate animals are treated systematically, with major emphasis on the fossil record.

Each phylum is discussed in proportion to its geological importance. Those phyla with a long and complex fossil record are considered in detail; those with little or no record, only briefly. The treatment of each of the more important phyla is basically systematic, i.e. taxonomic, as the authors feel that the students using the present work will wish to keep their newly acquired knowledge organized and classified, and there seems no better way of accomplishing this than by considering the phyla essentially in the order of increasing complexity (from Protozoa, the simplest, to Hemichordata, the most complex).