Today the conodont animal remains perhaps the most disputed creature in the zoological world.

Preface
List of Illustrations
Prelude: The Impossible Animal
1. The Road to El Dorado
2. A Beacon in the Blackness
3. The Animal with Three Heads
4. Another Fine Mess
5. Outlaws
6. Spring
7. Diary of a Fossil Fruit-Fly
8. Fears of Civil War
9. The Promised Land
10. The Witness
11. The Beast of Bear Gulch
12. The Invention of Life
13. El Dorado
14. Over the Mountains of the Moon
Notes
Index

Simon J. Knell, Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, is renowned for his innovative studies of fossils as scientific and cultural objects. Previously a popular geology columnist for Geology Today, Knell has published The Making of the Geological Society of London; The Culture of English Geology, 1815-1851; and The Age of the Earth: From 4004 BC to 2002 AD.