Encyclopedia of Australian Wildlife

Project editor Janet Healey

Art editor James Marks

Reader’s Digest, 1997, ISBN 0864491182, colour photographs throughout, glossy photographic boards, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, minor rubbing and bumping to covers, previous owners gift inscription on front endpaper, dustjacket shows minor edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing, chipping and a little creasing (see photographs)

“Packed with information.  More than a thousand individual entries and colour photographs describe and identify our animals.  You’ll learn that the ancestors of the platypus, found only in Australia and New Guinea, inhabited South America in the age of the dinosaurs, and that some scientists believe that the plant-life sea squirts are the evolutionary link between the invertebrates and the more complex vertebrate animals.  The book opens with an explanation of how Australian animals are classified and a description of where they live, followed by a chapter on the unique evolutionary development of our animals after Australia broke away from the supercontinent of Gondwana and began its long drift northward from Antarctica.”