I am a bone geek, I confess. On my bookshelves are a bunch of coffee-table books full of skulls, femurs, and xyphoid processes. They include From Lucy To Language, loaded with hominid remains, Human Bones for our current anatomy, and Fossils for a quick hit of Deep Time. An excellent addition to this sub-sub-genre is called, simply, Evolution. It's loaded with gorgeous pictures of vertebrate skeletons (including this angler). In today's New York Times, I have a photoessay with several other selections. You can check out a slide show here.
Update: I forgot to mention that I talk about the photoessay at the top of this week's NY Times Science podcast.
Life Science
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
And I thought that anglers were scary looking with their flesh on...
I definitely need to get a copy of this book; thanks for sharing this Carl.
Posted by: Laelaps | November 6, 2007 11:23 AM
The link to the book Fossils you mention is broken. What is the full reference?
Martin
Posted by: Martin Weiss | November 6, 2007 12:40 PM
Martin--Thanks. Links should all work now.
Posted by: Carl Zimmer | November 6, 2007 2:13 PM
Ah! ,a href=http://gufodotto.blogspot.com/2007/10/evolution.html>Saw it some weeks ago and was planning to get it. I skimmed through the pages and the pictures are just wonderful... Didn't know an english version was available, though... (it's also definitely cheaper)
Posted by: luca | November 9, 2007 3:59 AM
If you like bones, have you checked out the Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week (SVPOW!) blog at http://svpow.wordpress.com/ ? Very narrow, very fascinating stuff.
Posted by: Mike from Ottawa | November 18, 2007 12:03 AM
Yes, skulls and skeletons can be really fascinating. Especially fish have often such complex cranial structures. When I was this year at the Museum of Natural History at Vienna I photographed some very interesting skeletons and skulls of fish, including those of a monkfish. But the other ones were also really amazing, for example the strange skeleton of a sunfish, or the bizarre skull of a halibut. I posted some photos of them some time ago at my blog: http://bestiarium.kryptozoologie.net/artikel/einige-interessante-fischskelette/
Posted by: Sordes | November 21, 2007 3:52 PM