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Vertebrates : comparative anatomy, fuction, evolution
If you are a student coming to the study of vertebrates for the first time, several introductory remarks may be helpful, especially on how this textbook will support your work. First, the discipline of vertebrate biology is diverse and inclusive. It brings together themes from molecular biology, genes and genomes, evolution and embryology, biomechanics and experimental physiology, and it incorporates continuing and astonishing new fossils into the vertebrate story. Much of what you have met in earlier courses you will meet again here in an integrated way.
Second, to unify these themes, I have again written and revised this seventh edition within the unifying framework of form, function, and evolution. The first few chapters set this up, and the subsequent chapters treat vertebrates system by system. You may notice that each of these subsequent chap¬ters begins with a discussion of morphology, followed by a discussion of function and evolution. Each chapter is therefore self-contained—form, function, evolution.
Third, as a student you likely enter this course after some background in the sciences, perhaps expecting to equip yourself with practical knowledge useful later in professional schools or in health-related careers. Certainly this course, in part, delivers such practical information. But because ver¬tebrate morphology is an integrative discipline, it brings together physiology, embryology, behavior, and ecology and also deploys modern methods of systematics and new finds in paleontology. Consequently, you will move beyond memorizing facts in isolation or as an end in themselves, and instead begin to meet and understand larger concepts to which the morphology testifies. What may come as a sur¬prise is that many theories, especially evolutionary theories within vertebrate biology, are still unsettled and unresolved, inviting a new idea or fresh approach open to anyone. This is one of the reasons I have included various controversies, and support your efforts to become engaged in the thinking and scientific process.
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