We cannot catechise our stony ichthyolites, as did the necromantic lady of the Arabian Nights did the coloured fishes of the lake which had once been a city, when she touched their dead bodies with her wand, and they straightaway raised their heads and rephed to her queries. We would have many a question to ask them if we could - questions never to be solved. Hugh Miller, The Old Red Sandstone When I started this book in 1991, the subject of vertebrate origins was fusty and unfashionable. Early drafts for this preface read like an extend� ed complaint at the lot of traditional morphologists, cast aside by the march of modern molecular biology. But no longer - this book should reach you at a time of renewed inter� est in the origin of the vertebrates, our own particular corner of creation. For although the topic has excited interest for well over a century, molec� ular biology has only lately achieved the maturity necessary to test its predictions. As a legitimate field of study, it is fashionable again.

Review

Henry Gee has admirably mastered a formidable library of scattered reference to bring this timely book together...Palaeontologists, zoologists and geneticists should read this book and learn from it. - Endeavour
The book is a true mine of information. - Ethology Ecology & Evolution
Before the Backbone is certainly a valuable addition to my bookshelf, and I commend it to all of those interested in vertebrates in particular or in metazoan phylogeny as a whole. - Geological Magazine

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