Abstract
Ward is Professor of Geological Sciences and Curator of Invertebrates at the Thomas Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle. A paleontologist, he has published extensively on the nautilus and its fossil relatives, the ammonites. The present book, as its title implies, deals primarily with those organisms who have survived the great extinctions of the past 500 million years. Although the author considers most extensively those invertebrate organisms with which he is most familiar, such as brachiopods (clams, etc.), gastropods (snails, etc.), and cephalopods (nautilus and ammonites, relatives of modern day squid and octopi); he also has chapters on the horseshoe crab and the coelocanth, and considers briefly the extinction of dinosaurs. He discusses the types of plants that were prevalent in the various periods, and the role they play in the survival and disappearance of animals.