7 options
The fossil chronicles : how two controversial discoveries changed our view of human evolution / Dean Falk.
De Gruyter University of California Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013 Available online
View online- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Falk, Dean.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Fossil hominids.
- Flores man.
- Australopithecines.
- Human remains (Archaeology).
- Human evolution--Philosophy.
- Human evolution.
- Paleoanthropology.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (274 p.)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- Berkeley : University of California Press, c2011.
- Language Note:
- English
- System Details:
- Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- Summary:
- 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.
- Contents:
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- One. Of Paleopolitics and Missing Links
- Two. Taung: A Fossil to Rival Piltdown
- Three. Taung's Checkered Past
- Four. Sulcal Skirmishes
- Five. Once upon a Hobbit
- Six. Flo's Little Brain
- Seven. Sick Hobbits, Quarrelsome Scientists
- Eight. Whence Homo floresiensis?
- Nine. Bones to Pick
- Notes
- Glossary of Neuroanatomical Terms
- References
- Index
- Notes:
- Description based upon print version of record.
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 9786613278197
- 9781283278195
- 1283278197
- 9780520949645
- 0520949641
- OCLC:
- 747412136
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.