For more than twenty years, the Science Times section of The New York Times has been the source of the latest discoveries in the worlds of archaeology, anthropology, and paleontology for readers throughout the world. The award-winning Times writers make the recent finds and their implications comprehensible, and in lucid analyses take readers beyond the headlines toward deeper understanding.The Science Times Book of Fossils and Evolution traces life's first foothold on earth and the explosion of creation in the Cambrian era, through the reigning years of the largest animals to ever walk the planet - the dinosaurs of the Mesozoic - to the emergence of Homo sapiens two hundred thousand years ago. This illustrated volume reports on extraordinary fossil finds and currently vying theories of evolution. Included are the most pivotal discoveries of paleontology: the unearthing of Australopithecus in Ethiopia, the treasure trove of fossils in the Gobi Desert, and the startling discovery that Neanderthals lived in Europe only thirty thousand years ago.Itself a trove of treasures, The Science Times Book of Fossils and Evolution will be enjoyed by amateur archaeologists, naturalists, students, dinosaur enthusiasts, and everyone interested in science. (71/4 X 91/2, 252 pages, illustrations)