Books on Geology and Paleontology
from the Borrego Desert Nature Center

Fossil Treasures of the Anza-Borrego Desert: The Last Seven Million Years. Edited by George T. Jefferson and Lowell Lindsay. 394 pages. San Diego: Sunbelt Publications. 2006. ISBN 0-932653-50-2. $49.95, hard cover. Format: Hardcover

Get ready to be taken on a journey through 7 million years in time. Look at Anza-Borrego when it was a tropical inland sea full of marine life, when it was a tropical paradise with riparian forests and a savanna filled with exotic animals, when it was overrun with the wild waters and sedimentary deposits of the Colorado River.

Left over from these years are the fossilized remains of more than 550 types of plants and animals, ranging from microscopic pollen and water fleas to walrus bones and mammoth skeletons. For over 150 years, scientists have quietly gone about the business of research, study, and interpretation of these remains. The work has been low-key, but now the results can be seen in this comprehensive work, a compilation of 23 authors, each with his own specialty.

In Fossil Treasures of the Anza-Borrego Desert, you will see why today's eroded badlands (seen from places like Fonts Point, the Carrizo Overlook, and along Fish Creek Wash) constitute North America’s most continuous history of life for most of the last 7 million years. Take a look how one of the richest, most varied fossil records in the western hemisphere got there, and how the work of paleontologists opens vistas of a long-vanished past.

The real stars of the story are the animal groups. The bestiary reads like a Who's-Who of many of the most unique fossil vertebrates on earth — bathtub-sized tortoises, the sabertooth cat, giant ground sloths, the giant short-faced bear, the largest known mammoth, a giant camel, and the largest bird ever to fly northern hemisphere skies. Chapters discuss fossil footprints, intercontinental connections, and paleoclimates and environmental change.

Exquisite illustrations and color foldout paleolandscapes bring the past to life throughout the text. The book is edited by George T. Jefferson, a California State Park district paleontologist, and Lowell Lindsay, publisher and board member of the Association of Earth Science Editors.

Buy it now at the Borrego Desert Nature Center, 652 Palm Canyon Drive, Borrego Springs, California.
Email: here • Call (760) 767-3098 • Fax (760) 767-3099 • Write Box 310, Borrego Springs 92004

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Books on Geology and Paleontology from the Borrego Desert Nature Center

Books on Geology and Paleontology
from the Borrego Desert Nature Center