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Praise for 'Dry Store Room No 1': 'This book is worthy of the place it tells us about, and that is a pretty lofty chunk of praise.' The Times 'In this loving survey of his life at the museum, Fortey...is never less than enthused by all the museum's collections.' Financial Times 'Fortey...in his affectionate portrayal of the institution in which he spent his working life ... sneaks us behind the scenes with all the glee of a small child seeing for the first time the museum's iconic Diplodocus skeleton ... always authoritative ... the beauty of the book is that - just like a museum - you can visit the different sections in any order you choose, lingering in the places that most take your fancy ... and there is plenty of solid science to enjoy, elucidated with brilliant flair.' Sunday Times

Praise for `Dry Store Room No 1': `This book is worthy of the place it tells us about, and that is a pretty lofty chunk of praise.' The Times `In this loving survey of his life at the museum, Fortey...is never less than enthused by all the museum's collections.' Financial Times `Fortey...in his affectionate portrayal of the institution in which he spent his working life ... sneaks us behind the scenes with all the glee of a small child seeing for the first time the museum's iconic Diplodocus skeleton ... always authoritative ... the beauty of the book is that - just like a museum - you can visit the different sections in any order you choose, lingering in the places that most take your fancy ... and there is plenty of solid science to enjoy, elucidated with brilliant flair.' Sunday Times

Fortey has a gift for bringing profound science grippingly to life for a general audience, and even the very best writers have admiration for his superlative literary craft. Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution is the latest book from the working palaeontologist, and it does not disappoint. Fortey's previous book was Life: An Unauthorized Biogrpahy, the 4,500-million-year history of our planet and its remarkable array of living inhabitants. Trilobite! tells a part of that story. The trilobites were animals that looked like giant woodlice. Denizens of the sea, they first evolved at least 540 million years ago. Trilobites were among the earliest animals to leave evidence of their passing, as fossils. They became extinct around 250 million years ago, during the so-called end Permian mass-extinction - a cataclysmic extinction that dwarfed the demise of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Most people have seen the beautiful, polished fossils of trilobites in museums, rock shops and mantlepieces. Fortey came across them as a tender teenager and it was love at first sight. He grew up to be the trilobite specialist at the Natural History Museum in London: Trilobite! tells the 300-million-year history of the lives and times of the trilobites, and records a personal obsession. More than any other science, palaeontology has scenery, and Fortey describes his quest to find trilobites from the deserts of Morocco to the glaciers of Spitzbergen. He also explains what palaeontologists actually do. Palaeontologists are voyagers on a ocean of time. Unlike every other commuter on the 8.02 to Waterloo, Fortey will spend his working day exploring vistas of the deep past, worlds as strange and remote as anything in science fiction or poetry. In Trilobite! he invites you to share the ride. Review by HENRY GEE (Kirkus UK)

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Richard Fortey retired from his position as senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in 2006. His previous books include the critically acclaimed Life: An Unauthorized Biography, shortlisted for the Rhône-Poulenc Prize in 1998, Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001, The Hidden Landscape, which won the Natural World Book of the Year in 1993 and Fossils - A Key to the Past which is now in its third edition. He also won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Science Writing in 2003. He was Collier Professor for the Public Understanding of Science in 2002, has been elected to be President of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007, and is a member of the Royal Society. His latest book is Dry Store Room no 1 – The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum.

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