Looking For a Good Book!!

[Dimetrodon]

Hey everyone. Haven't posted in a while, but I still lurk every now and then. Anyway, I am looking for a good book that focuses on the plants and animals that lived before the dinosaurs. Pretty much a book that starts on some of the most early pre-cambrian life and goes up to where the dinosaurs start, with artists renders and pictures of the fossils. I own the book "Dinosaurus" which has a good section, but skips over a lot to get to it's namesake.

I'm sure a book like this exists somewhere, anyone have any good recommendations? Thanks!! ;D

[tomhet]

I can provide several titles:

-The Rise of Fishes by John Long
-Discovering Fossil Fishes (haven't checked it but I've heard that it's decent)
-Early Vertebrates by Janvier (pretty expensive, but very complete)
-Treatise of Invertebrate Paleontology (every tome takes care of different animals, though)
-Wonderful Life (it focuses on the Burgess Shale)
-The Chengjiang Fauna
-Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie – Encyclopedia of Paleoherpetology, Part 17A Pelycosauria
- Review of the Pelycosauria (these last two are quite nice if you ask me)
-The Kingfisher Encyclopaedia of Dinosaurs. Great illustrations done by John Sibbick, but not very extensive.

[Libraraptor]

How about Richard Fortey´s
"Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth"Vintage Books (Taschenbuch - September 1999)

It reads like a novel and yet you learn so much. I´d recommend it to anyone who wants to go further back in time than to the mesozoic era.

How about "Dawn of the Dinosaurs - Life in the Triassic" by Fraser and Henderson. It has very good illustrations in it and yet a scientific approach had been chosen for the text - not a popular one.

[richard]

I need a modern book as well please

[Dimetrodon]

Thanks for the tips everyone! I think I'm going to pick up

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

and

Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Life in the Triassic (Life of the Past)