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Where ancient creatures walked—science uncovers their lasting impressions.

The Steven C. Minkin (Union Chapel) Paleozoic Footprint Site ranks among the most important fossil sites in the world today, and Footprints in Stone recounts the accidental revelation of its existence and detailed findings about its fossil record.

Currently 2,500 miles from the equator and more than 250 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, the Minkin site was a swampy tropical forest adjacent to a tidal flat during the Coal Age or Carboniferous Period more than 300 million years ago. That fecund strand of sand and mud at the ocean’s edge teemed with the earth’s earliest reptiles as well as amphibians, fish, horseshoe crabs, spiders, jumping insects, and other fascinating organisms. Unlike dinosaurs and other large animals whose sturdy bodies left hard fossil records, most of these small, soft-bodied creatures left no concrete remains. But they did leave something else. Preserved in the site’s coal beds along with insect wings and beautifully textured patterns of primeval plants are their footprints, fossilized animal tracks from which modern paleontologists can glean many valuable insights about their physical anatomies and behaviors.

The paleontological examination of fossil tracks is now the cutting-edge of contemporary scholarship, and the Minkin site is the first and largest site of its kind in eastern North America. Discovered by a local high school science teacher, the site provides both professional and amateur paleontologists around the world with a wealth of fossil track samples along with an inspirational story for amateur explorers and collectors.

Authoritative and extensively illustrated, Footprints in Stone brings together the contributions of many geologists and paleontologists who photographed, documented, and analyzed the Minkin site’s fossil trackways. An engrossing tale of its serendipitous discovery and a detailed study of its fossil records, Footprints in Stone is a landmark publication in the history of paleontology.
 

Lavishly produced with color fossil photographs throughout, the first comprehensive summary of findings at one of the world’s best fossil bird localities, offering profound insight into early avian evolution after the end-of-Cretaceous extinction event.

What is today a high mountain desert in southwestern Wyoming was, 52 million years ago, a magnificent subtropical lake system. Part of the famed Green River Formation, the limestone layers of this region’s Fossil Lake provide an unparalleled record of life in the Early Eocene of North America. Evolutionary biologist Lance Grande has spent much of his career collecting and studying the beautiful and diverse assemblage of fossils from this locality. Since his 2013 book, The Lost World of Fossil Lake, researchers have uncovered many new fossil bird specimens—often stunningly preserved skeletons, sometimes even including feathers—and benefited from significant advances in our understanding of avian evolution. Their findings help to illuminate the early days of bird life on Earth.

In this volume, Grande and his collaborators—paleornithologists Daniel T. Ksepka and Gerald Mayr—explore these birds of Fossil Lake, where various researchers have formally named and described thirty avian species. The authors also present an additional twenty possible new species awaiting further study and formal review, birds that may soon be added to that list. Fossil Lake and the Rise of Modern Birds then places these avian ancestors within the global context of other fossil birds. Like Grande’s previous publications, this comprehensive work features stunning imagery, including nearly two hundred detailed fossil photographs—fifty that have never appeared elsewhere. 

Whether you are an ornithologist, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, or amateur fossil enthusiast interested in the early evolutionary diversification of modern birds, this book is a treasure.