Evolution: Making Sense of Life

Historical coverage of fossil bed formations is detailed, and the authors include excellent examples of how fossils are used to reconstruct biological entities that do not fossilize, like types of behavior.\n Chapter 17 (human evolution) provides outstanding coverage of the most recent findings in human evolution and does an excellent job of tying together the evolutionary connections within the hominin and hominid clades. [...]if I first taught a topic that is in the middle of a storyline, and then backtrack to cover a chapter at the beginning of the storyline, my students would likely have a harder time adjusting to the reference material. Alternatively, instructors may have a hard time transitioning to covering chapters out of order and will have to work harder to create a seamless storyline for their students. [...]one of the greatest attributes of the textbook (readability with storylines) comes at a cost of practicality and organization.