Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution - Softcover

Falk

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520274466 ISBN 13: 9780520274464

Publisher: University of California Press, 2011

Synopsis

Two discoveries of early human relatives, one in 1924 and one in 2003, radically changed scientific thinking about our origins. Dean Falk, a pioneer in the field of human brain evolution, offers this fast-paced insider’s account of these discoveries, the behind-the-scenes politics embroiling the scientists who found and analyzed them, and the academic and religious controversies they generated. The first is the Taung child, a two-million-year-old skull from South Africa that led anatomist Raymond Dart to argue that this creature had walked upright and that Africa held the key to the fossil ancestry of our species. The second find consisted of the partial skeleton of a three-and-a-half-foot-tall woman, nicknamed Hobbit, from Flores Island, Indonesia. She is thought by scientists to belong to a new, recently extinct species of human, but her story is still unfolding. Falk, who has studied the brain casts of both Taung and Hobbit, reveals new evidence crucial to interpreting both discoveries and proposes surprising connections between this pair of extraordinary specimens.

About this title

Review:

"The book is part historical drama, part neurological crash course and part autobiography . . . . The combination is refreshing."-- (10/08/2011)

"Brilliant. . . . Sparkles with scholarship and wit."-- (10/06/2011)

"Infectious. . . . This book provides a powerful reminder that fossils should hold value to those beyond sometimes argumentative paleoanthropologists."-- (03/22/2013)

"Engaging and compelling. . . . Effective and affecting."-- (03/01/2013)

About the Author:

Dean Falk is a Senior Scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her previous books include Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origin of Language and Braindance, Revised and Expanded Edition: New Discoveries about Human Origins and Brain Evolution.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0520274466
• ISBN 13: 9780520274464
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 274