monly provides insufficient information for easy lo- cation of a publication (e.g. page numbers, volume number, publishing company, etc. missing); and, of course, many of the references are to publications in Turkish.

As one might expect with so many authors in- volved, the scope and quality of the chapters varies greatly. In spite of the many reviewers, one will find some surprising statements in this book. For example the Origin of Coal chapter includes the assertion that coal seams were “formed . ..from plant remains which accumulated together with other sediments on the sea floor, in shallow, gradually subsiding basins of sedimentation.” Possibly this is just a language prob lem because in a different place the authors discuss the accumulation of peat in swamps (perhaps “sea” only refers to a water body rather than the sea?). However, later in the chapter the authors cite S. Sen at length who is a proponent of the Indian school of allochthonous coal origin.

The chapter on coal-forming environments very briefly discusses lacustrine, deltaic, fluvial and shoreline plain environments. But the significant im- pact of sea level changes, or of climate variations, on the global and regional distribution of peat-forming environments, much discussed in recent years among coal geologists, remains unmentioned. The Illinois Basin is only brought up in the context of peat deposits in ox-bow lakes. The chapter on the origin of coal focuses almost entirely on the peat stage and fails to discuss adequately the profound effects of burial and the attendant geochemical changes in- duced primarily by increased temperatures (some of this is discussed in the chapter on coal petrography, though). The two chapters on the determination and occurrence of the inorganic constituents of coal take a well balanced approach to the goal set for the book. The section on computer applications in coal mining discusses primarily historic aspects of this rapidly developing area. The chapter on reserves. production, consumption and trade of coal provides a quick overview over these areas; the emphasis is on trade and a discussion of the factors influencing price, e.g. the relationship between the price of oil and coal. The chapters on use by industry, sampling, beneficiation and the various uses and potential uses of coal are all instructive and of about the right depth of treatment for the intended audience. I found the

chapter on economics of coal utilization well worth reading. The last two chapters deal with environmen- tal aspects of coal mining and utilization; the recla- mation chapter is written from a decidely U.S. per- spective.

Most chapters are well illustrated, primarily with figures from previous publications. At the end of chapters, where space permitted, photos of Turkish mining scenes, many by the late G. Yalta, famous for his photos of Turkish coal miners, are included and add to the special flavor of the volume. I can recommend this book’s purchase to individuals who want to inform themselves about coal in general, or almost any aspect of coal that is not their specialty, and to libraries serving persons who seek to inform themselves about coal. With a few exceptions the information provided is reliable and presented at an appropriate depth for the intended audience.

H.H. Damberger, Urbana, Ill.

/‘/I SO01 2-8252(96)00006-2

Palaeontology / Evolution

M.S. Gordon and E.C. Olson, 1995. Invasions of the Land. Columbia University Press, 312 pp. US $ 49.00. Hardcover. ISBN O-23 1-06876-X

I confront Incasions of the Land now for the second time (the first as a reviewer of the draft manuscript for Columbia University Press in 1992). I have the same mixed feelings that I experienced with the Ms. On face value, Invasions looks to have much going for it, much to recommend it.

The goals articulated in the preface are ambitious and praiseworthy: To provide an up-to-date, compre- hensive overview of what is known and not known about plant and animal transitions to land and to place this factual picture “in a conceptual and theo- retical framework that is significantly different from those used in existing descriptions of the subject” but “applies this new information to classical issues in the field.”

The table of contents promises a serious attempt at a synthesis of paleontological and neontological data addressed within the framework of the coeval physical environment.

Book reviews 303

The three “coauthors,” two of whose names appear on the binding, as described in the Preface bring varied backgrounds and impeccable credentials to fulfilling these goals: Malcolm Gordon is an evolutionarily oriented animal physiologist specializ- ing in ecological physiology; the late Everett Olson was a paleontologist and geologist; D.J. Chapman is an algalogist and student of plant evolution.

Each author has assumed responsibilities for one or more of the 10 chapters that appear to be within the realm of his capabilities. Gordon, Olson and Chapman coauthor the “Introduction”, Chapter 1 and “Summary and Synthesis,” Chapter 10. Olson is responsible for Chapters 2 (The physical settings of land invasions), 4 (Fossil evidence of metazoan transitions: Cambrian through middle Silurian), 5 (Fossil evidence of metazoan transitions: Late Sil- urian and Devonian) and 6 (Fossil evidence of meta- zoan transitions: Permo-Carboniferous and later). Chapman authored Chapter 3 (Plant transitions to land). Gordon deals with Chapters 7 (Functional evidence from living molluscs), 8 (Functional evi- dence from living annelids and crustaceans) and 9 (Functional evidence from living vertebrates).

Despite high promise, problems surface immedi- ately.

The authors are seemingly of two minds about the nature of their readership. They claim to aim at professional colleagues and advanced students and hope their work will be “accessable to scientists working in fields other than paleobiology, physiol- ogy, systematics, and evolution. . . .”

But as written, the book has little to offer the serious, professional audience to whom it is claimed to be addressed: complex issues are commonly unad- dressed or misunderstood. Perhaps because they worked on the book for so long (well over 10 years according to the preface) they simply tired of the rigors and scholarship necessary to bring this work to a scholarly conclusion and to keep current with the literature. In Chapter 3 for example, although there is discussion of the place of the charophytes in the evolutionary scheme of things, there is no men- tion of the book by Graham (1992) that comprehen- sively addresses this question, nor of more than two or three of her papers on this topic.

The chapters are in many respects shallowly or naively written, and commonly read like lecture

notes and/or the outcome of a graduate student seminar put together by individuals both ill-informed and uncomfortable with the data. Sometimes, one can but wonder whether the reference source cited was read: For example, in the discussion about the Silurian or Devonian age of Buruguwunthiu (pp. 88, 89X it is implied that this is merely a disagreement among different workers. Not so! There are two Burugwunuthiu horizons now known in Australia: one with a Silurian age firmly and unequivocally fixed by graptolites, the other of Devonian age. This is not a trivial issue to those concerned with the phylogeny of the tracheophytes!

For “professional colleagues”, whether those whose research encompasses the area of early ecosystem evolution and terrestrialization or others wishing a rigorous introduction to this topic, this book is neither scholarly nor detailed enough to be useful or of interest. Statements appear without doc- umentation or reference citation as if they were well-known truisms, there are remarkably few pri- mary sources for many sections, and references to secondary sources - textbooks, review papers and semi-popular articles - sometimes by authors no better informed about the questions and problems of early terrestrialization than the authors - are com- mon. For example: the fossil record of Arthropods (pp. 136-145) is presented with minimal reference citations, indeed sometimes none. Information about branchiopods, ostracodes, copepods and amphipods (pp. 138-140) is presented without a single citation to literature - fossil or modern. The only reference to any of Frank Carpenter’s seminal work on insects is a brief 1977 publication. Carpenter’s major contri- bution to this topic - the two volume Treatise - was published in 1992. The discussion of fossil molluscs is similarly poorly referenced, with no doc- umentation at all provided for statements relative to the bivalves.

Some of the diagrams borrowed from other publi- cations are wholly misconstrued. Fig. 3.1 (p. 34 in Znuasions) is a reproduction of fig. 6.1 (Selden and Edwards, 1990) that is labelled to show a dichotomy between “aquatic” and “terrestrial” records for some groups of “plants” with Early Paleozoic records. It was assumed that the “dashed” lines in fig. 6.1 had the same significance as the dashed lines of fig. 6.3 (Selden and Edwards, reproduced as Fig.

4.1, on p. 97 in Invasions). Selden and Edwards had no such thing in mind! This means that Fig. 3.1 is garbled. The aquatic charophytes are shown as ter- restrial; the terrestrial bryophytes, whose aquatic members are secondarily aquatic, and the sphenop- sids are shown as wholly aquatic in the Silurian and Devonian, while neither the rhyniopsids or lycopsids have terrestrial records until sometime in the Devo- nian. The publication date of the Selden and Ed- wards paper is correctly cited in the bibliography (1990); the figure caption cites the publication date as 1989.

Among the problems is that none of the authors have played seriously in the field of pre-carbonifer- ous geology or paleontology, nor dealt with ques- tions that intimately bear on early terrestrialization and early ecosystem evolution, nor even with some of the major groups of organisms that make up that fossil record, e.g. arthropods and embryophytes. A perusal of the bibliography, shows no original re- search papers on the question of early terrestrializa- tion attributed to this trio. In fact their names scarcely appear in the bibliography at all. Only four refer- ences, all peripherally related to the subject of the text, can be attributed to Gordon and Olson.

This lack of direct involvement in the issues of this book effectively means that the knowledge they bring to this area is all second-hand. While this may not be a handicap for a popular or semipopular book, nor even a textbook, I regard it as a potential liability in a serious, scholarly work. Acknowledgements in the preface make it clear that no individuals who work in this area were asked to review chapters for completeness and accuracy.

It is easy for the specialist to nitpick and there is a great deal to nitpick about in this book. hasions is full of minor errors (incomplete references in the bibliography; misattributed figures, e.g. Fig. 3.16 on p. 88 is erroneously attributed to Selden and Ed- wards; Fig. 3.17 on p. 89 to Chaloner and Sheerin - the reverse is true), major mistakes (as noted above), mistatements, wooly intepretations and mis- representation of facts. In those parts of the book within my professional purview, examples falling into all these categories are common enough that 1 remain skittish with regard to the scholarship of those chapters and sections in which I have no expertise. The numerous problems with regard to the

treatment of the fossil arthropods addressed by Shear (Nature, vol. 375, p. 27) supplement my comments in one such area.

Looked at most generously, Inuasions serves sev- eral useful purposes for those with peripheral inter- ests in this area: it provides a bibliography for some of the principle sources that is more or less current through 1992. It attracts the attention of a broader scientific public than would normally be concerned with such issues to an important evolutionary ques- tion and notes contributions of some of the major players.

But because of lack of rigorous scholarship, use information from this book with the utmost care. Anyone more than peripherally interested in this research area should go to the original literature, take some of the assertions with a grain of salt and look sceptically at the illustrations. Specifically, for any- one wanting information about the contribution of the fossil record to the question of terrestrialization, I cannot recommend chapters that deal with the fossil record. As one who has spent much of the past 20 years concerned with the origin of terrestrial plants, 1 find so much that is confused, misleading and mis- taken in hasions that it indicates that we should all consider our own forays into unfamiliar literature and scholarship where any of us may be equally guilty of similar blunders.

J. Gray, Eugene, Oreg.

I’ll SO01 2-X252(96)00002-5

Dating Techniques

C. Beck (Editor), 1994. Dating in Exposed and Surface Contexts. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Hardcover, XIII + 239 pp. ISBN O-8263- 15-23-2.

Dating in Exposed and Surface Contexts, edited by Charlotte Beck, is a detailed review of both old and new methods of dating geomorphic surfaces and materials exposed at the surface. Authors who are actively developing and (or) using the various dating methods are responsible for the individual chapters, which cover the current state of knowledge of such