This book is not designed to provide the entire content of such a course; rather, it is meant to provide a conceptual background for the course and essential information and ideas that may be only partially presented=or presented from-a-different point of view-in lectures and laboratories. Many teachers of undergraduate paleontology courses follow a phylum-by-phylum taxonomic format in their lectures. There are twelve chapters in our volume; an average assignment of one chapter per week allows for coverage, of the entire book in a typical semester. In Part I of the text, Description and Classification of Fossils, we give some general information about the fossil record in an introductory chapter. In subsequent chapters we discuss the says in which fossils are studied as specimens within species, as species, and as hierarchical groups of species. Part I might have been called Taxonomy or Systematics but is slightly different in scope from these broad disciplines. A major addition to Part I in this edition is an introduction to the philosophy and methodology of multivariate analysis, which has become a fundamental tool of the paleontologic trade.
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