Carlton E. Brett

A valuable general reference, not limited to just New York State. After a chapter on history and naming conventions, there’s excellent coverage of trilobite anatomy – I’m embarrassed to find that I’ve forgotten a lot, to the extent that I want to copy some of the illustrations and make them into flash cards or quiz sheets until I have the difference between cephalon and cranidium down again. Then a chapter on taphonomy discusses what happens when your time is up and you go to the biome in the sky. Then comes an excellent geologic history of New York – at least for the Paleozoic, which is all that concerns trilobites. Then a period by period history of Paleozoic geological units in the state. I did field work around the fringe of the Adirondacks, so sites like Trenton Falls and Dolgeville are somewhat familiar, but I was still surprised by how much I didn’t know or had forgotten. Finally, the appendix – about half the book – illustrates most of the species listed, by order. Lots of old Ordovician friends here – Isotelus, Triarthrus, Cryptolithus, Flexicalymene. Overall a great reference for trilobites and the Paleozoic history of northeastern North America.

A few things missing or improvable – there are no guides to collecting sites, although many areas are mentioned in the text and the reference list, so an astute reader could track them down. I suppose that’s unavoidable; fossil collecting is increasingly difficult, even for professionals; rock quarries and other private property that used to be open now bar access due to liability fears, and public lands are much scarcer in the east than the west. Next all the photographs show perfect or near-perfect specimens. Again that’s probably unavoidable, but readers should be aware that what you usually find in the field is bits and pieces – it takes a lot of experience before you can look at a limestone slab full of disarticulated trilobite parts, pick out an oddly shaped feature, and say “Oh, yeah, that’s an Isotelus hypostome.”… (meer)