Description: No complete understanding of biodiversity is possible without the evolutionary history of Arthropoda. The group of invertebrates, which includes such fauna as trilobites and crustaceans, has represented life's most diverse phylum for nearly 600 million years. What light does the fossil record shed on the history of this phylum and its major components? Are the interrelationships among groups of arthropods resolved whether or not fossils are included? Which taxa play a derisive role in altering hypotheses based on extant arthropods? And how can we integrate disparate lines of evidence from fossil and living taxa in a robust phylogenetic scheme for Arthropoda?

Gregory Edgecombe has assembled premier specialists in the field, each of whom addresses a major issue in arthropod diversity by reviewing evidence of key fossils from a common perspective and examining the interplay between extinct and extant species through inference of the structure of the arthropod evolutionary tree.

The explosion of research in high-level phylogeny of Arthropoda and the rekindling of scientific interest in the role that fossils play in phylogenetic analysis inspire this volume. And with the recent growth of knowledge of DNA sequencing, a more complete appraisal of the deep history of arthropods is more possible than ever before.

With the most complete collection of modern perspectives on the history of Arthropoda, this volume advances the current debate on paleontology's role in discovering life's hierarchy. Of interest to specialists in a wide range of fields including paleontology, petroleum geology, oceanography, and entomology, Arthropod Fossils and Phylogeny will be the standard general reference onarthropod paleontology for years to come.

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