The eagerly anticipated revision of Herpetology by Pough, Andrews, Cadle, Crump, Savitzky, and Wells is available in a third edition. Herpetology presents a comprehensive picture of amphibians and reptiles and their important roles in modern ecosystems. The new edition features full-color photos and species maps, a new chapter on biogeography, and expanded treatment of conservation.

John B. Heiser was Director of the Shoals Marine Laboratory operated by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire on the Isles of Shoals in the Gulf of Maine.

The seventh edition ofVertebrate Lifeexpands the emphasis on integration of structure and function in a phylogenetic context with a large number of changes in both text and art, many of which were suggested by colleagues who are using the book. We have added a new chapter, "diving on Land", that emphasizes the physical differences between water and air and the consequences of those differences for organismal form and function. Another new chapter, "Synapsids and Sauropsids: Two Approaches to Terrestrial Life," provides an evolutionary perspective on the anatomical and physiological differences between these two lineages of amniotes that emphasizes interactions among lung ventilation, locomotion, metabolism, endothermy, nitrogen excretion, and sensory systems. We believe that this synthesis provides a context that will help students to understand the origin and significance of the anatomical and physiological differences between extant birds and mammals. An enormous quantity of information about feathered dinosaurs and the evolution of birds has appeared since the sixth edition was published. The transition between birds and dinosaurs (in the popular sense) is so compelling that we have moved the description of the origin and early evolution of birds to the end of the chapter describing Mesozoic diapsids.This placement allows us to focus on extant birds in the following chapter, and our treatment of this group has been revised extensively. Our understanding of human evolution has also been greatly extended. In this rapidly changing field, new fossils have extended the hominid record back to more than 6 million years ago and shown that early hominids were far more diverse than we had realized. At the opposite end of the time scale, fossils ofHomo erectusfrom Indonesia indicate that three species of Homo coexisted as recently as 30,000 years ago. The increased emphasis on conservation in the sixth edition was well received by users. We have brought that material up to date (a depressing process for the most part) and added new examples of the application of information about organismalbiology to conservation and management throughout the text.