Kadimakara: Extinct Vertebrates of Australia

P.V. Rich; G.F. Van Tets; F. Knight

ISBN 10: 0909674264 / ISBN 13: 9780909674267

Published by Pioneer Design Studio, 1985

About this Item

Dust jacket has 15cm tear top spine corner (see photo) and fading along top front cover edge. Dust jacket has rubbing due to shelf wear. Two pages within have post it place markers on bottom book block corner. This book is about the people who discovered the fossils of animals and plants that have inhabited Australia for over 600 million years and how the fossils were found and, more importantly, gives insights into how palaeontologists view their own processes of interpreting what the animals and plants were like when alive, and the conditions under which they lived so long ago. Readers will go on a journey into the land of the Kadimakara, the animals of the Australian Dreamtime, revealed in large part by the energy, knowledge and enthusiasm of the scientific explorers. Lovely colour illustrations (33). This is a large book (22cm x 31cm). Postage will be priced accordingly.

Seller Inventory # 000355

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Kadimakara: Extinct Vertebrates of Australia
• Publisher: Pioneer Design Studio
• Publication Date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0909674264
• ISBN 13: 9780909674267
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Frank Knight
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fair
• Seller catalogs:
  • Nature
  • Australian
  • Science & Physics

About this title

Synopsis

According to the traditions of some Australian Aborigines, the strange monsters known as "Kadimakara" once lived in a "roof" of vegetation over Central Australia, occasionally foraging for foods in the "lower" world. These Aborigines believed that on one occasion, when the Kadimakara's path back to their home was cut off, they were obliged to roam on earth until they died in Lake Eyre. Their bones, the Aborigines thought, became what we know as fossils. In the richly illustrated volume Kadimakara, pioneers of the bourgeoning field of Australian fossil research provide a broad overview of vertebrate history in that country. Offering a wealth of information on how palaeontologists view their own processes of interpreting what fossil animals and plants were like when alive, the book includes an essay for each of thirty-two extinct vertebrates. The work begins with an engagingly written chapter "Priest-Geologists and Knighted Explorers: A Short History of the Discovery of Vertebrate Fossils in Australia" by P. V. Rich, continues with an essay "The Stirton Years, 1953-1966" by R. H. Tedford, and goes on to a discussion of changing Australian environments throughout geological time by E. M. Truswell and G. E. Wilford. The essays on fossil vertebrates constitute the remaining two-thirds of the book.

Synopsis

Originally published in 1985(Pioneer Design Studio, Victoria, Australia) and here republished with a prefatory and bibliographic update, this is an absolute beauty of a book oversize (8<3/4>x12<1/4>") and gorgeously illustrated by Frank Knight. Pioneers in the field of Australian fossil research provide a broad overview of vertebrate history in tha