Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.

Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind
544Overview
"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 humanityit 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.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780062410290 |
---|---|
Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
Publication date: | 08/03/2021 |
Pages: | 544 |
Sales rank: | 272,163 |
Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.23(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction T. Rex 1
Chapter 1 The Roots of Humanity 11
Chapter 2 Banned 30
Chapter 3 Origins 36
Chapter 4 The Falsifier 58
Chapter 5 The Farthest Outpost of Humankind 72
Chapter 6 Badlands 94
Chapter 7 The Zipperman's Ash 112
Chapter 8 Under the Volcano 125
Chapter 9 The Whole Thing Is There 133
Chapter 10 A Poison Tree 146
Chapter 11 The Pliocene Restoration 156
Chapter 12 Standing Upright 160
Chapter 13 The Whole World Wants to Know 172
Chapter 14 Trees and Bushes 184
Chapter 15 Voyaging 195
Chapter 16 Mission to the Pliocene 210
Chapter 17 Harvest of Bone 222
Chapter 18 Border Wars 236
Chapter 19 Biting the Hand 256
Chapter 20 In Suspense 259
Chapter 21 Under the Radar 276
Chapter 22 Trouble Afoot 282
Chapter 23 Tête-à-Tête 304
Chapter 24 All That Remains 315
Chapter 25 Spine Qua Non 327
Chapter 26 Neither Chimp nor Human 339
Chapter 27 Skeleton from the Closet 353
Chapter 28 Backlash 365
Chapter 29 Hell Yes 377
Chapter 30 Return to the Zoo of the Unknown 384
Chapter 31 Neither Tree nor Bush 399
Epilogue: Sunset 413
Acknowledgments 423
Notes 429
Bibliography 485
Credits 515
Index 519