1. Substantial comments or mini-essays, often with links of their own. They are laid out in the order I deal with them in the Chapter.
2. Pages that consist almost entirely of Web links on a particular topic.
3. Small comments and asides ("footnotes", if you like), including useless information, again arranged in order. I have listed them under page number as well as topic.

Mini-Essays and Comments.

• What is paleobiology?
• Biases of the fossil record.
• Geological Time for biologists.
• Why have I not answered the obvious question: what was the first living organism?
• Earth's oldest cells
• The Superiority of Slime. Lovers of edition 3 will note that I omitted this little section from the pages of the 4th edition. So it's placed here instead. Remember:
  

  Glycocalyx, the slime on bacteria
  Helps them live in a bovine interior
  Powerful drugs
  Can't get at the bugs:
  It's clearly a substance superior.
  

• Stromatolites as Evolutionary Forcing Houses. Lovers of the 3rd edition will note that I have omitted this thought from the pages of the 4th edition: not because it's wrong, but because of space. So it's placed here instead.
• Oxygen levels at 2700 Ma

Web Links

• Lagerstätten are rock formations with wonderful preservation. There are sections here on Amber; Solnhofen Limestone; Messel, and so on...
• Trace Fossils
• Collecting and Preparing Fossils
• The Fossil Trade
• Dinosaur Graveyards
• Paleontologist Profiles
• Geologic time scale, and dating fossils
• Stromatolites and cyanobacteria
• BIF and the Oxygen Revolution

Footnotes

• Page 18. Fossils can be lost in museums: here is an example. BBC News OnLine, 6 January 2004.
• Page 19. Improving the radiocarbon dating technique. Bard, E., et al. 2004. A better radiocarbon clock. Science 303: 178-179. No Web site: this is not sexy stuff. Science will soon make this paper freely available.
• Page 21. Earth's Oldest Crystals Here is a clear review of current research: Valley, J. W. 2005. A cool early Earth. Scientific American XXX: XX­XX. [October 2005.] Free access on the Web. Thank you!
• Page 22. When did life begin on Earth? It's around 3.8 billion years however you slice it: but the devil is in the details. National Geographic News, May 2002.
• Page 24. The great bombardment of Earth around 4 b.y. ago
  • National Geographic News, July 25, 2002.
  • older background piece

Reference list for Chapter 2, Fourth Edition, with Web links for some papers

Page last revised March 10, 2006

All links checked September 30, 2005

[For Chapter 1, click here ]

[For Chapter 3, click here ]

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