Fossil Men

"e;A rip-roaring tale, Fossil Men is one of those rare books that can be a prism through which to view the world, exposing the fabric of the Earth and illuminating the Tree of Life."e;New York Times bestselling author Peter NicholsA behind-the-scenes account of the shocking discovery of the skeleton of Ardi, a humanancestor far older than Lucy - a find that shook the world of paleoanthropology and radically altered our understanding of human evolution.In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim Whitethe Steve Jobs of paleoanthropologyuncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopias Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus, was 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than Lucy, then the oldest known human ancestor. The findings challenged many assumptions about human evolutionhow we started walking upright, how we evolved our nimble hands, and, most significantly, whether we were descended from an ancestor that resembled todays chimpanzeeand 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. It is a scientific detective story played out in anatomy and the natural history of the human body. Kermit Pattison brings into focus a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including one of the worlds greatest fossil hunters, Tim Whitean exacting and unforgiving fossil hunter whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant who sometimes didnt bother going home at night to devote more hours to science; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist; Berhane Asfaw, who survived imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopias most senior paleoanthropologist and who fought for African scientists to gain equal footing in the study of human origins; and the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology.An intriguing tale of scientific discovery, obsession and rivalry that moves from the sun-baked desert 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.