52 Things you should know about palaeontology, edited by AlexCullum and Allard W.Martinius. Agile Libre, Nova Scotia, 2015. No. of pages: 137. Price: C$19.00. ISBN 978‐0‐9879594‐4‐7 (paperback)

Here is a funny old book, both funny peculiar and funny fun in all the best ways. Its authors are geologists, palaeontologists and biostratigraphers, from universities, museums and industry. They have each written one or two essays, each only two pages long, which consider some aspect of palaeontology or their relation to it. Essays vary from the superficial to the erudite, from factual to amusing; all are readable. The book is dedicated to the late Adolf Seilacher, who intended to contribute. Sadly, one contributor, Martin Brasier, died in a car crash shortly before publication, but provided a thought-provoking essay. Contributions are so varied in content that I am just going to cherry-pick a few to give the flavour. Simon Conway Morris is suitably tongue-in-cheek in explaining that ‘astrobiology is the study of things that do not exist’ (p. 31). One colleague, who will remain anonymous in case his boss reads this, laments that ‘… it is always good to be reminded that the object of your studies is a little out of the ordinary … even [by] the manager who thinks that palaeontology is only about dinosaurs’ (p. 71). And there is more than one essay that has informed my research programme, not just the several articles on trace fossils (as good as they are), but also on the importance of fragmentary echinoid debris seen in thin section (p. 78). Who are the palaeontological stars of this book? Dinosaurs and microfossils. Dinosaurs, ‘cave men’ and the Ice Age megafauna are the three stars in the palaeontological firmament, at least to the public, so it is a little unexpected that two of these groups are barely mentioned. Yet, more eccentrically, dinosaur essays are outnumbered by those on microfossils, whose importance we appreciate as experts and which are the stars of the many contributions by oil company palaeontologists. Trace fossils also do quite well. What is missing is a huge swathe of invertebrate macrofossil groups. Who might read 52 Things …? It is really a book by palaeontologists for palaeontologists. I doubt if a layman would read very far without feeling out of their depth, for the articles contain too much outside their experience. The real readership will be among the keen amateurs, undergraduates, postgraduates and post-docs, who will be looking for inspiration, insight and entertainment. And they will find it. Companion volumes consider geology and geophysics – I shall be looking out for them.

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