Vertebrate Palaeontology is a basic textbook on vertebrate paleontology

Vertebrate paleontology

Vertebrate paleontology is a large subfield to paleontology seeking to discover the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord, through the study of their fossilized remains...

 by Michael J. Benton

Michael J. Benton

Michael J. Benton is a British paleontologist, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol....

, published by Blackwell's

Blackwell Publishing

Wiley-Blackwell is the international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley's Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publishing, after Wiley took over Blackwell Publishing in...

. It has so far appeared in three editions, published in 1990, 1997, and 2005. It is designed for paleontology

Paleontology

Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

 graduate courses in biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 and geology

Geology

Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

 as well as for the interested layman.

The book gives an overall account of every major group of living and fossil vertebrate. At the rear of the book is a phylogenetic classification which combines both the Linnaean hierarchy

Linnaean taxonomy

Linnaean taxonomy can mean either of two related concepts:# the particular form of biological classification set up by Carl Linnaeus, as set forth in his Systema Naturæ and subsequent works...

 and the cladistic arrangement, and has been used as a guideline for the Wikipedia pages on living and extinct vertebate taxa. However, some of Benton's classification differs from that in the Tree of Life Web Project

Tree of Life Web Project

The Tree of Life Web Project is an ongoing Internet project providing information about the diversity and phylogeny of life on Earth. This collaborative peer reviewed project began in 1995, and is written by biologists from around the world....

, especially as regards the relationship of early amphibian groups (Batrachomorpha

Batrachomorpha

‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮Batrachomorpha is a name traditionally given to recent and extinct amphibians that are not related to reptiles. It most often includes the extinct groups Temnospondyli and Lepospondyli.-Origin of the term:...

 and Reptiliomorpha

Reptiliomorpha

Reptiliomorpha refers to an order or subclass of reptile-like amphibians, which gave rise to the amniotes in the Carboniferous. Under phylogenetic nomenclature, the Reptiliomorpha includes their amniote descendants though, even in phylogenetic nomenclature, the name is mostly used when referring to...

).