The Vertebrate Story, 1959
By Alfred Sherwood Romer

Alfred Sherwood Romer was one of the major vertebrate paleontologists from the 1930's until his death in 1973. 
He taught biology at Harvard and was a long time director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. 
Check here, here, and here, for more on Romer. 

The Vertebrate Story is an extensive revision of Romer's earlier book, Man and the Vertebrates, originally
published in 1933.  The Vertebrate Story focuses on the biology and evolution of the vertebrates and contains
numerous restorations from a number of paleo-artists, including C. R. Knight (several of his Chicago Field
Museum, and American Museum of Natural History pieces), F. L. Jaques, Erwin Christman, G. Heilmann,
and many others.  An interesting inclusion in the book is a copy of a painting of the Tasmanian Wolf by
C.R. Knight. I do not think I have seen this painting before.  Nevertheless, Romer notes that "the
[Tasmanian] 'wolf' is now confined to Tasmania and even there is close to extermination."
 As I noted elsewhere on this web site , the last known thylacine died in a Tasmanian zoo in 1936, although
according to Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten in their book "A Gap in Nature" (2001), "authentic-sounding
reports [of living thylacines] were received until at least the 1940's."

This book also includes numerous photos of living animals.



At last, I finally found another restoration of a prehistoric animal (Baluchitherium) by E. R. Fulda.  This makes it
four published restorations of prehistoric animals by E. R. Fulda that I am aware of.



The Mammal-like reptile, Lycaenops, restored by John C. German under the direction of Edwin H. Colbert.

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