FOSSILS: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by...

FOSSILS: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy (Abrams: $12.95; 192 pp., illustrated, paperback original). A curator at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, Gayrard-Valy traces Western attitudes about fossils and their meaning. The significance of seashells found on mountain tops and immense bones intrigued scientists and philosophers for centuries. During the Renaissance, European savants began the studies that would replace the Biblical history of the Earth with the theories that form the basis of modern biology, geology and paleontology, including a vastly increased time-scale, continental drift and the ongoing evolution of new species. The illustrations include reproductions of old manuscripts depicting past visions of the Earth’s origins.