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.