This book provides an in-depth review of the sutures of the skull. The premature closure of the sutures of the skull (craniosynostosis) due to genetic or metabolic etiologies results in typical progressive skull deformity, due to both the inhibition of growth caused by the affected cranial suture and associated compensatory expansion of the skull along the open ones.

From the international bestselling author of Gut, an entertaining and highly informative book about how the body's organs work in tandem to keep us as healthy as we can be.

THE arthropods are a group of related invertebrates; arthropodists, for the most part, are a group of unrelated vertebrates. Each special­ ist, whether an entomologist, a myriapodist, a carcinologist, or an arachnologist, works in his own particular field and gives little thought to the work of specialists in other fields. As a result, the relationships of the various kinds of arthropods to one another are by some ignored, while others propose theories of arthropod phy­ logeny based on an insufficient knowledge of the anatomy of the arthropods in general. Since the insects are conceded to be at the top of the arthropod line of evolution, entomologists in particular have been concerned with the ancestry of insects. Some have sought to derive the insects from myriapods, others from symphylans, oth­ ers from crustaceans, while some would carry the insects back to the trilobites, or even in a direct line of descent to the annelid worms. Clearly, all these claims of insect ancestry cannot be true. The writer, therefore, himself for many years an entomologist, has attempted to evaluate the various theories of insect origin by brows­ ing around in the fields of other specialists. The final result has been the disconcerting conclusion that the facts of arthropod structure are not consistent with any proposed theory of arthropod interrela­ tionships. The investigation, however, has added much to the writer's own information about the comparative anatomy of the arthropods, and this information is set forth in the following chapters in the hope of making a general knowledge of the arthropods more readily available to students who expect to be specialists in one arthropod group or another. Just as a cone sits best on its base, so specialization should taper upward from a broad foundation.