In this dynamic account, award-winning science writer Ann Gibbons chronicles an extraordinary quest to answer the most primal of questions: When and where was the dawn of humankind?Following four intensely competitive international teams of scientists in a heated race to find the “missing link”–the fossil of the earliest human ancestor–Gibbons ventures to Africa, where she encounters a fascinating array of fossil hunters: Tim White, the irreverent Californian who discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia; French paleontologist Michel Brunet, who uncovers a skull in Chad that could date the beginnings of humankind to seven million years ago; and two other groups–one led by zoologist Meave Leakey, the other by British geologist Martin Pickford and his French paleontologist partner, Brigitte Senut–who enter the race with landmark discoveries of their own.

Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human reveals the perils and the promises of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale..

For more information about the title The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors, read the full description at Amazon.com, or see the following related books:

From Lucy to Language: Revised, Updated, and Expanded — In 1974 in a remote region of Ethiopia, Donald Johanson, then one of America's most promising young paleoanthropologists, discovered "Lucy", the ...  > read more

Biological Anthropology: The Natural History of Humankind — The only book that integrates the foundations and the most current innovations in the field from the ground up. Over the past twenty years, this ...  > read more

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Author: Ann Gibbons

Publisher: Anchor

Date: Apr. 10, 2007

List Price:

$14.95

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$8.40

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