Fossil Men
The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind
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- R$ 77,90
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- R$ 77,90
Descrição da editora
"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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this lively debut, journalist Pattison digs into the story of Ardi, a 4.4-million-year-old hominid skeleton with profound evolutionary ramifications. At the heart of this tale is Tim White, a Berkeley professor with a "monastic devotion to fossils," who led the team that discovered Ardi in Ethiopia's Middle Awash region in 1994 and spent 15 years studying the remains. Pattison describes the digs that unearthed Ardi, an ancestor of modern homo sapiens more than a million years older than the more famous Lucy, and captures White and company's grueling expeditions to Ethiopia, where they had to navigate political tensions to retrieve the fossils and, after nine years, take them abroad for study. Pattison ably combines the adventure yarn with scientific minutiae, tracking the team's findings, which ultimately refuted the theory that modern apes are close relics of a common human ancestor. Pattison doesn't neglect the academic backlash against this challenge to conventional wisdom (one professor called them "so far wrong as to be laughable") and makes vivid characters of the Ardi team. Though Pattison goes deep on the science, the abundance of detail gets to be a bit much. Nevertheless, those interested in human origins should check out this vivid and thorough study.