Foreword: the pleasure of ruins
Introduction: when fossils became life
Organic remains of a former world : William Smith: a layered chronology of fossils
Mary Anning: "The greatest fossilist the world ever knew"
Charles Darwin: fossil hunting in South America
A preternatural selection : Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope: the bone wars
Charles Knight: Leaping Laelaps and its co-stars
Charles Walcott: the Burgess Shale and the Cambrian Explosion
From Indiana Jones to iridium anomaly : Roy Chapman Andrews: the ends of the Earth
Reg Sprigg and Trevor Ford: life before ancient life
Mary Leakey: consuls, nutcrackers, and footprints in the ash
Luis and Walter Alvarez: did an extraterrestrial impact kill the dinosaurs?
The modern ancient : Jenny Clack: gaining ground
King Kong and Jurassic Park: paleontology and popcorn
Yuri Khudi: reawakening Mammuthus primigenius
Life on Earth: fossils from when the world was young.
