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The Science of Lost Worlds: Copyright Page

The Science of Lost Worlds
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Notes

table of contents
  1. Contents
  2. List of Illustrations
  3. List of Figures
  4. List of Tables
  5. Acknowledgements
  6. 1 - Prof. Ichthy’s Inaugural Lecture
    1. 1. Awful (and Marvellous!) Changes
      1. 1.1 Prof. Ichthy Versus Professor Ichthyosaurus
      2. 1.2 The Discovery of Loss
    2. 2. Trace-Based Reasoning
    3. 3. Roadmap and Strategy
  7. 2 - The Avalonian Ediacaran: Lost, but Not Erased
    1. 1. The First Metazoans
      1. 1.1 Avalonia
      2. 1.2 Pizza Disks
      3. 1.3 The Ecologies of Avalon
    2. 2. Loss and Erasure
    3. 3. Tracecentrism and History Redux
    4. 4. The Challenge of Loss
  8. Interlude: The Parable of the Lost City
  9. 3 - Artificing
    1. 1. A Dinosaur’s Burrow
    2. 2. Modelling Rangeomorphs
    3. 3. Strategic Perspectivalism
    4. 4. Coda: De-Extinction
  10. 4 - Grafting
    1. 1. Do Dinosaurs Feel Pain?
    2. 2. Stems and Failed Experiments
    3. 3. Dickinsonia
    4. 4. Conflicting Perspectives
    5. 5. Coda: Living Fossils
  11. 5 - Anchoring
    1. 1. Ediacaran Ecology and Its Anchors
    2. 2. Epistemic Iteration
    3. 3. Bringing It All Together: How the Metazoan World Arose
    4. 4. Coda: Scientific Laws
  12. 6 - Possible Worlds
    1. 1. How Possibly: At Least Three Ways
    2. 2. Imagination Bad—Artifactualism Good
      1. 2.1 Imagination Bad
      2. 2.2 Artifactualism Good
    3. 3. The Science of Lost Worlds Is a Science of Objective Possibility
    4. 4. Astrobiology and the Actual in Service of the Possible
  13. 7 - Imagined Worlds
    1. 1. The Poverty of Imagination
    2. 2. The Palaeoartist’s Dilemma
      1. 2.1 Shrink-Wrapping: What Went Wrong?
      2. 2.2 Diversity of Representation as an Aesthetic/Epistemic Virtue
    3. 3. Artifactualist Imagination
  14. 8 - Peculiar Worlds
    1. 1. When Does History Matter?
    2. 2. Metaphysics and Science
    3. 3. The Peculiarity of History
    4. 4. From Peculiar to Dappled
  15. 9 - Unprecedented Worlds
    1. 1. Past-Derived Knowledge and the Future
    2. 2. Strategic Perspectivalism and Unprecedented Worlds
    3. 3. Records of the Future?
  16. 10 - Loss and Wonder
    1. 1. The Lost World of Kirkdale
    2. 2. Lost Worlds and Seeing Anew
  17. Bibliography
  18. Index

© 2026 Adrian Mitchell Currie

University of Calgary Press

2500 University Drive NW

Calgary, Alberta

Canada T2N 1N4

press.ucalgary.ca

All rights reserved.

This book is available in an Open Access digital format published under a CC-BY-NCND 4.0 Creative Commons license, available freely to readers everywhere, at no cost to authors. The publisher should be contacted for any commercial use which falls outside the terms of that license.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The science of lost worlds / Adrian Mitchell Currie.

Names: Currie, Adrian, author

Description: Series statement: BSPS open series, ISSN 2564-3169 (print), ISSN (ebook) 2564-3177; no. 5 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20260173878 | Canadiana (ebook) 20260173908 | ISBN 9781773857091 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781773857107 (softcover) | ISBN 9781773857121 (PDF) | ISBN 9781773857138 (Open Access PDF) | ISBN 9781773857114 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Paleontology—Philosophy. | LCSH: Art and science.

Classification: LCC QE711.3 .C87 2026 | DDC 560.1—dc23

The University of Calgary Press acknowledges the support of the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund for our publications. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

Funder Logos: Alberta government, Government of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, Certified Canadian Publisher

The manufacturer’s authorized representative in the EU for product safety is Mare Nostrum Group, B.V., Doelen 72, 4831 GR Breda, The Netherlands. Email: gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk

Copy editing by Glen Hoffmann

Cover art: “Wonderful Changes” by Jim Robins

Cover design, page design, and typesetting by Melina Cusano

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