Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind - Hardcover

Pattison, Kermit

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062410288 ISBN 13: 9780062410283

Publisher: WilliamMr, 2020

Synopsis

In 1994, an excavation team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White-"the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology"-uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia's Afar region. Radiometric dating indicated the skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus, was 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than "Lucy," our earliest known human ancestor. The findings shattered many widely accepted assumptions about human evolution-how we started walking, how we evolved our nimble hands, and, most significantly, whether we were descended from a common ancestor that resembled today's chimpanzee-and repudiated a half-century of paleoanthropological orthodoxy. Fossil Men is the first full-length exploration of Ardi, the fossil men who found her, and her impact on what we know about the origins of the human species. Kermit Pattison brings into focus a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including one of the world's greatest fossil hunters, Tim White-an irascible and demanding scientist feared by friends and enemies alike; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant who slept in his office so he could devote more time to fossils; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist; Berhane Asfaw, who survived imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopia's most senior paleoanthropologist and who fought for Africans scientists to gain equal footing in the study of human origins; and the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in anthropology, who maintained a testy relationship with the Ardi team and cast doubt on the discovery. An intriguing tale of scientific discovery and bitter rivalry that moves from the sun-baked plains of Africa and a nation caught in a brutal civil war, to modern high-tech labs and academic lecture halls, Fossil Men is popular science at its best, and a must read for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.

About this title

About the Author

Kermit Pattison is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Fast Company, Runners World, and Time, among many other publications. He spent more than half a decade doing research for Fossil Men, a large portion of which was spent in the field in Ethiopia with Tim White's team. This is his first book. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Edition details

• Publisher: WilliamMr
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0062410288
• ISBN 13: 9780062410283
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 544