fervid scribblings

[Henry Gee]

Dear colleagues,

Apologies to those subscribers of PALEONET and VRTPALEO, who will already
have seen this. Your delete key is close at hand.

I have just finished a book on the origin of vertebrates, and the publisher
has asked me to complete a complicated questionnaire for marketing purposes.
They would like to know of suitable conferences towards the end of the year
at which the book could be displayed, as well as details of courses in which
it might be useful (e.g. Z901 Zoology at the University of Wherever). Can
you help?

Some details of the book will help. It is written with the advanced
undergraduate or graduate seminar in mind, and reviews all the major ideas
on the origins of vertebrates. The idea for the book came to me when I was
teaching advanced undergrads in Cambridge (UK) in the mid-1980s, and no
suitable text was available either for me or for them.

Chapter 1 introduces deuterostome diversity in
a cladistic framework. Chapter 2 discusses the work of such as Bateson,
Gaskell, Garstang, Berrill and others; Gaskell, Garstang and Berrill in some
detail. The work on carpoid echinoderms by Gislen is introduced.
Chapter 3 looks at the origin of the vertebrate head and of segmentation,
with special reference to Romer's idea of the 'somatico-vosceral animal', and
of a great deal of current work on the genetics of development (Hox genes and
so on). Chapter 4 presents the first critical review of its kind of Jefferies'
calcichordate theory. It assesses Jefferies' contribution to the field and
explains why the calcichordate theory is flawed. Chapter 5 presents a short
discussion on the problems of reconstructing
phylogeny based on a depauperate Recent fauna in which the major episodes of
cladogenesis were closely spaced, a long time ago.

I am anxious that this posting is not seen as an advertisement, so I will
say no more about publisher, price or date of
release just yet, except to those who contact me individually.
In the meantime I would be most grateful for possible feedback
on courses and conference offnet to my private email address which is:

henry at chiswick.demon.co.uk

Many thanks for your help.

--
Henry Gee

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Nature,                          henry at chiswick.demon.co.uk
4 Little Essex Street,           naturelondon at mcimail.com
London WC2R 3LF                  nature at naturedc.com
tel +44 171 836 6633 x 2473      fax +44 171 836 9934
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