"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.
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