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- Title: Animal Evolutio – Genomes, Fossils, and Trees
- Author: Maximilian J. Telford, D.T.J. Littlewood
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Pages: 271
The subject of animal evolution has been explored and discussed for a century and a half. As long ago as the late 19th century, Ernst Haeckel, a renowned evolutionary biologist and supporter of Darwin, drew some beautiful phylogenetic trees depicting the possible course of animal evolution. Haeckel’s trees included many of the major animal groups, placed on the tips of gnarled and life-like branches, each drawn complete with bark and twigs.
One could be forgiven for thinking that the framework of animal evolution was completed long ago. Such a view would be grossly mistaken. The past two decades in particular have seen a revolution in our understanding of animal evolution, and revisiting this topic in 2009 is very timely. As the contents of this volume will testify, research into animal evolution is currently in its most vibrant phase ever, with novel conclusions being generated at great pace.
The basis for this book was as part of the tercenten ary celebrations of Linnaeus, for which we organ ized a Discussion Meeting at the Royal Society and a follow-on meeting at a (now sadly extinct) venue provided by the Novartis Foundation.
The majority of contributions have been considerably updated or even signifi cantly changed, and we are delighted to include two entirely new chapters. We would like to thank the authors and the many reviewers for their considerable efforts. We thank our editors at OUP, Helen Eaton and Ian Sherman, for their patience and support. We are pleased that we have been provided with the opportunity to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin with the publication of this volume.
Lastly, we dedicate this volume to those who inspired us to become zoologists and to our children, who demonstrate daily the delights and surprises of development, discovery, genotype, and phenotype.