Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind
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Book Overview
"Riveting. ... Pattison's uncanny ability is] to write evocatively about science. ... In this, he is every bit as good as the best scientist writers." --New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"Brilliant. ... A work of staggering depth." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
A decade in the making, Fossil Men is a scientific detective story played out in anatomy and the natural history of the human body: the first full-length account of the discovery of a startlingly unpredicted human ancestor more than a million years older than Lucy
It is the ultimate mystery: where do we come
from? In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White uncovered a set of
ancient bones in Ethiopia's Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the
resulting skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus--nicknamed
"Ardi"--was an astounding 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older
than the world-famous "Lucy." The team spent the next 15 years studying the
bones in strict secrecy, all while continuing to rack up landmark fossil
discoveries in the field and becoming increasingly ensnared in bitter disputes
with scientific peers and Ethiopian bureaucrats. When finally revealed to the
public, Ardi stunned scientists around the world and challenged a half-century
of orthodoxy about human evolution--how we started walking upright, how we
evolved our nimble hands, and, most significantly, whether we were descended
from an ancestor that resembled today's chimpanzee. But the discovery of Ardi wasn't just a leap forward in
understanding the roots of humanity--it was an attack on scientific convention
and the leading authorities of human origins, triggering an epic feud about the
oldest family skeleton.
In Fossil Men, acclaimed journalist Kermit Pattison brings us
a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including White, an uncompromising
perfectionist whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his
propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant whose deep expertise
about teeth rivaled anyone on
Earth; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist with
radical insights into human locomotion; Berhane Asfaw, who survived
imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopia's most senior paleoanthropologist; Don Johanson,
the discoverer of Lucy, who had a rancorous falling out with the Ardi team; and
the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology.
Based on a half-decade of research in Africa,
Europe and North America, Fossil Men is not only a brilliant investigation into the
origins of the human lineage, but the oldest of human emotions: curiosity,
jealousy, perseverance and wonder.
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