Edinburgh Napier University

  Both professional and amateur herpetologists will find Reptile Incubation: Environment, Evolution and Behaviour a fascinating read. The book provides detailed academic discussions of a broad range of topics in an engaging readable style. Deeming and Unwin’s introductory chapter provides a fascinating insight into the evolution of the amniotic egg, summarising a surprisingly rich fossil record of reptile eggs. Using data from eggs and nests of modern reptiles and birds they draw inferences about the nesting habits of dinosaurs, which they conclude were more similar to the former than the latter. The embryo fossil record is naturally more sparse, but the authors argue that those that do exist provide little further information about the incubation environment.