Part 1 Principles and classification: categories of information; principles; a classification of fossiliferious sediments. Part 2 Examples and opportunities: Mesozoic intertidal sands, neritic limestones, and a coral bank; upper Devonian shelf sandstones and shales; an Ordovician hardground; Ecocene sands and muds - shelf to shore; condensed pelagic limestones, conodonts, ammonoids and slumps; pelagic bituminous mudrock - aerobic, dysaerobic or anaerobic?; actuopalaeontology - the palaeontology of the present. Part 3 Field strategies: stratification, bedding and cyclic sedimentation; graphic logs; sampling; autochthonous buildups; bedded fossiliferous sediments. Part 4 Taphonomy: plant fossils; coal and oil shales; animal fossils; trace fossils; concretions; dolomite replacement and silicification; deformation of fossils. Part 5 Pseudofossils and stratigraphical and structural errors. Part 6 Fossils for the palaeontologist and palaeoecologist: palaeontological and palaeophysiological analysis; palaeoecological analysis; fossil ores (fossil lagerstatten). Part 7 Fossil for the sedimentologist: allochthonous skeletal accumulations; other parameters; bioturbation and trace fossils. Part 8 Fossils for the stratigrapher: primary lithostratigraphy and facies analysis; biostratigraphy; problems; the graphical method of correlation. Part 9 Fossils for the structural geologist and geophysicist. Appendices: field equipment and its uses, collecting and preparation; fossil identification; statistical analysis in the field; table of skeletal minerology, salinity tolerence, depth (marine bethod) and trophism; generally recognized chronostratigraphic divisions.