From reviews of the hardback edition (1981): ` Intended for advanced undergraduate courses in anthropology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology, as well as professionals in these fields, [the book] will serve as an excellent introduction to taphonomy and paleoecology. It should also reach a much wider audience with less specialized interests in vertebrate evolution, to whom the lessons to be learned from humble, often broken, bones will come as a pleasant surprise. ' Mark Newcomer, Nature