This is the most beautifully illustrated of the four books on paleontology I've read recently. The full-color plates really allow you to connect the comparative anatomy discussed in the text with the visible features. Tattersall and Schwartz write well and the text never gets dry or technical. Richard Klein's The Dawn of Human Culture is excellent also and has very clear explanations of high-tech dating methods such as radioisotope...
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It's been 20 years since I read up much on the paleoanthropology, so I thought I'd get up to date and read some of the recent books on the subject. One thing I noticed right away, compared to when I was last studying the subject in college, was how our evolutionary tree was now much "bushier," compared to what we knew back then. Now it's thought that there were at least 3 or 4 different species of Australopithecines, and the...
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According to Reuters of December 5, 2000, French and Kenyan scientists unearthed fossilized remains of mankind's earliest known ancestor that is at least 6 million years old, and the find is not only much older than any else previously known but is also in a more advanced stage of evolution. More news from Reuters on March 21, 2001, and we find out that Meave and Louise Leakey are ready to shake the world with their discovery...
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"Extinct Humans" is a fascinating account of human evolution, extraordinarily illustrated with crisp, powerful photographs of fossils which drive home the point that these are the remains of actual beings who have inhabited this world before us, whether they were our direct ancestors or instead "cousins" to our own line of descent.Tattersall and Schwartz have studied not just the literature on the subject, but virtually...
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We were all taught in school that human evolution was linear -- Australopithicus evolved into Homo erectus who evolved into a form of Homo sapiens, or us. But all other animals have numerous speciations and dead ends. Why are humans different? The authors answer: We aren't. They discuss, in detail, the history of thought in human evolution. They go through the fossils, showing many of them in glossy color photos. They ...
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