Two tiny trilobites in a vast Cambrian ocean drift past sea cucumber parasols and a shaggy, tree-like sponge. Snail tracks loop enigmatically against brushed-gray Silurian slate, and ghostly white crinoids feather a Devonian seascape. A delicate pterosaur flies bravely into the Jurassic gloom, while a Tyrannosaurus rex so big that its teeth fill our field of vision stalks the deep orange sands that mark the end of the Cretaceous period. These are just a few scenes from the magnificent drama that unfolds in glorious full color and three-dimensional texture in Rock of Ages, Sands of Time. Each of Barbara Page's 544 contiguous painted panels represents a million years of the history of life on earth, with fossil plants and animals depicted at the same scale and in association with each other just as they might be found by a paleontologist in the field. A muted rainbow of background colors evoke the rocks in which the fossils were found—the Texas Red Beds, for instance, or the yellow Solnhofen limestone—and keystone events are shown metaphorically, with fat rolls of paint marking major extinctions or continental drift. To fully experience the awesome impact of an eon's worth of time spread across 500 feet of bas-relief panels, you'd have to visit the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York, where Page's specially commissioned work will be installed when the museum opens in 2002. But this book is the next best thing. Not only does it contain crisp color reproductions of each painting, but it also includes an accessible essay from paleontologist Warren Allmon giving the scientific context behind the art. For fossil lovers of all ages, and anyone interested in the merging of art and science, Rock of Ages, Sands of Time will be the find of a lifetime.

Rock of Ages, Sands of Time: Paintings by Barbara Page, Text by Warren Allmon

Arts & Photography

Page, Barbara

Allmon, Warren D.

Individual Artists

University of Chicago Press

According to the idea of intelligent design, nature's complexity is the result of deliberate planning by a supernatural creative force. To date, most scientific arguments against this form of creationism have been made by evolutionary biologists. In this volume, a team of earth scientists reveals that the flaws of intelligent design are not limited to the biological sciences. Indeed, the geological sciences offer some of the best refutations of intelligent design arguements. For the Rock Record is dedicated to the proposition that the idea of intelligent design should be of serious concern to everyone. Editors Jill S. Schneiderman and Warren D. Allmon have gathered leading figures from the geological community with a wide range of viewpoints that go to the heart of the debate over what is and is not science. The purveyors of intelligent design theories and its kindred philosophies threaten the scientific literacy that our society needs by confusing faith and the practice of science. This collection offers a much-needed response.

For the Rock Record: Geologists on Intelligent Design

Religion & Spirituality

Schneiderman Ph.D, Jill S.

Christian Books & Bibles

University of California Press

The First 75 Years: A History of the Paleontological Research Institution

Paleontological Research Institution

Just outside the Village of Trumansburg, in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, is a 32-acre plot that is one of the largest remaining flat tracts of old growth forest in the area. This small but spectacular place, with its enormous trees, dense forest canopy, and never-plowed ground is a glimpse into the past. A walk through this small forested area may be the closest one can get in central New York to experiencing a landscape like the first Europeans encountered across most of the region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This book is the story of how this little forest-known as Smith Woods-came to be, and how it persisted through the years when other old growth forests met their demise by the axe and saw. Combining perspectives from geology, ecology, history, and anthropology, the authors weave a narrative history of the many influences-human and non-human-that have shaped this patch of land over the past 20,000 years since it emerged from the last glacial period. It is the story not just of Smith Woods, but of the forests that once covered almost all of northeastern North America.

Smith Woods: The Environmental History of an Old Growth Forest Remnant in Central New York State

Pritts, Marvin P.

Marks, Peter L.

Epstein, Blake P.

Bullis, David A.

Jordan, Kurt A.

Ithaca, New York : Paleontological Research Institution

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Books by Allmon, Warren D.