Sketches of Cambrian animals, including Anomalocaris, trilobites, nautiloid cephalopods, Opabinia, and Wiwaxia, among others

The Paleozoic Era, the "era of ancient life," lasted longer than the Mesozoic and Cenozoic combined.Entire evolutionary dynasties rose and fell in those long slow years -- first the ancient oddities of the Cambrian Period, then the vaguely familiar armored fishes of the Devonian Period, and finally the first great dynasties of land animals, the early reptiles and the synapsids. These books examine those organisms and the times they lived in.