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Chinese Fossil Vertebrates by Spencer Lucas, Columbia University Press, £30/$45, ISBN 0231084838

HOW rich is China in fossils? This book will tell you. Spencer Lucas’s compilation of all the important vertebrate fossils found in there devotes a mere four-and-a-half of its nearly 300 pages of text to the famous fossil birds of Liaoning province, noted for being preserved complete with feathers. But his book doesn’t dismiss the birds, it just puts them in the context of a wealth of other fossils dating back 500 million years.

Chinese palaeontology has blossomed over the past decade. As well as the exquisitely preserved “feathered dinosaurs” and birds that rewrote the story of avian evolution, the country has rich hordes of dinosaur eggs. It also has the oldest known vertebrate fossils. Small wonder, then, that Chinese fossils continue to grab a healthy share of palaeontology headlines.

But that abundance of data creates its own problems. This 300-page book has so much ground to cover that Lucas risks leave the reader breathless. China was home to the biggest mammals ever to walk the Earth—the giant rhinoceroses called indricotheres. These beasts were 5 metres high at the shoulders, yet have to be squeezed into less than two pages. For the serious palaeontologist, this is just a starting point. If you want to learn more about these fascinating creatures, take the book with you to a good library and use the 46 pages of references as a guide.