Writing the book: Fossils – The Essential Guide
Paul Taylor (UK)
A couple of years ago I was approached by the publishing section of the Natural History Museum to ask whether I would be interested in writing a general book on fossils. They had been happy with my previous book – A History of Life in 100 Fossils – which sold well and was translated into several foreign languages.
Accepting their invitation was a ‘no brainer’ for me. I’d long been struck by the surprising paucity of general books on fossils, in stark contrast to the plethora of books on dinosaurs. As a committed old-school palaeontologist, I wanted to adjust the balance. I also had the advantage of a broad familiarity with the huge fossil collections at the Natural History Museum where I had worked for over 40 years and viewed different parts of the collections when seeking specimens for illustrations in my earlier books, including Eyewitness Fossil.
I wanted to aim the new book at inquisitive older children and adults who already had an interest in fossils, such as the readership of Deposits Magazine, or who wished to develop one. I felt it important to cover all of the important groups of fossils, including invertebrates, vertebrates, plants, microfossils and trace fossils. It would have been wrong to have neglected dinosaurs but these were afforded only four pages of text, the same number as my own specialist group (bryozoans) and far less than the 18 pages given over to echinoderms which are more likely to be encountered by geologists.
Undertaking research for the book took me into many unfamiliar areas. For example, I had no idea how much the classification of placental mammals had changed following results from molecular phylogenetic studies. Fortunately, I was able to draw on the expertise of colleagues at the NHM and outside who were specialists on various taxonomic groups and could fact-check my draft text of particular chapters.
The book is being published simultaneously by the NHM in the UK and Chicago University Press in the USA. Although the content is the same in both editions, the covers are very different and there is a subtle change in the full title: in the UK the book is entitled Fossils. The Essential Guide (which is reviewed in Deposits by Jon Trevelyan; see Fossils: The essential guide Hardcover, by Paul D Taylor); and in the USA it is Fossils. An Essential Guide.