This is a book for beginners. Not geological beginners, because an introductory course in paleontology and some knowledge of the petrographic microscope is assumed, but for beginners in the study of the petrography of fossil constituents in sedimentary rocks. Fossils are studied for various reasons: 1) to provide chron ologic (time) frameworks, 2) to delineate rock units and ancient environments, or 3) to understand the past development (evolu tion) of living plants and animals. All of these uses may be at tained through petrographic studies of thin sections of fossils embedded in sedimentary...