The New York Times, November 6, 2007
About half a billion years ago, our ancestors were slender, jawless, fishlike creatures. Their backs were stiffened by a rod of cartilage, along which grew bony prongs. That smattering of bone was the forerunner of our vertebrae, and it gave us and all the other descendants of those ancient animals our name: the vertebrates. Vertebrates have evolved into tens of thousands of species dominating the ocean, land and sky. Much of their success is due to the many new forms their skeletons have taken. A new coffee-table-format book, “Evolution” (Seven Stories Press), offers hundreds of gorgeous photographs of those forms, as diverse as bats with fingers thinner than pipe cleaners and rhinos with skulls as stubborn as boulders.