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"Splendid and important .... Scientifically rigorous and written
with a clarity and candor that create a gripping tale ...
[Boehme's] account of the history of Europe's lost apes is imbued
with the sweat, grime, and triumph that is the lot of the
fieldworker, and carries great authority."-Tim Flannery, The New
York Review of Books In this "fascinating forensic inquiry into
human origins" (Kirkus STARRED Review), a renowned paleontologist
takes readers behind-the-scenes of one of the most groundbreaking
archaeological digs in recent history. Somewhere west of
Munich,paleontologist Madelaine Boehme and her colleagues dig for
clues to the origins of humankind. What they discover is beyond
anything they ever imagined: the twelve-million-year-old bones of
Danuvius guggenmosi make headlines around the world. This ancient
ape defies prevailing theories of human history-his skeletal
adaptations suggest a new common ancestor between apes and humans,
one that dwelled in Europe, not Africa. Might the great apes that
traveled from Africa to Europe before Danuvius's time be the key to
understanding our own origins? All this and more is explored in
Ancient Bones. Using her expertise as a paleoclimatologist and
paleontologist, Boehme pieces together an awe-inspiring picture of
great apes that crossed land bridges from Africa to Europe millions
of years ago, evolving in response to the challenging conditions
they found. She also takes us behind the scenes of her research,
introducing us to former theories of human evolution (complete with
helpful maps and diagrams), and walks us through musty museum
overflow storage where she finds forgotten fossils with yellowed
labels, before taking us along to the momentous dig where she and
the team unearthed Danuvius guggenmosi himself-and the incredible
reverberations his discovery caused around the world. Praise for
Ancient Bones: "Readable and thought-provoking. Madelaine Boehme is
an iconoclast whose fossil discoveries have challenged
long-standing ideas on the origins of the ancestors of apes and
humans."-Steve Brusatte, New York Times-bestselling author of The
Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs "An inherently fascinating,
impressively informative, and exceptionally thought-provoking
read."-Midwest Book Review "An impressive introduction to the
burgeoning recalibration of paleoanthropology."-Kirkus
Reviews(starred review)
An insightful new work, Function, Phylogeny, and Fossils integrates
two practices in paleobiology which are often separated -
functional and phylogenetic analysis. The book summarizes the
evidence on paleoenvironments at the most important Miocene
hominoid sites and relates it to the pertinent fossil record. The
contributors present the most up-to-date statements on the
functional anatomy and likely behavior of the best known hominoids
of this crucial period of ape and human evolution. A key feature is
a comprehensive table listing 240 characteristics among 13 genera
of living and extinct hominoids.
An insightful new work, Function, Phylogeny, and Fossils integrates
two practices in paleobiology which are often separated -
functional and phylogenetic analysis. The book summarizes the
evidence on paleoenvironments at the most important Miocene
hominoid sites and relates it to the pertinent fossil record. The
contributors present the most up-to-date statements on the
functional anatomy and likely behavior of the best known hominoids
of this crucial period of ape and human evolution. A key feature is
a comprehensive table listing 240 characteristics among 13 genera
of living and extinct hominoids.
"Splendid and important .... Scientifically rigorous and written
with a clarity and candor that create a gripping tale ...
[Boehme's] account of the history of Europe's lost apes is imbued
with the sweat, grime, and triumph that is the lot of the
fieldworker, and carries great authority."-Tim Flannery, The New
York Review of Books In this "fascinating forensic inquiry into
human origins" (Kirkus STARRED Review), a renowned paleontologist
takes readers behind-the-scenes of one of the most groundbreaking
archaeological digs in recent history. Somewhere west of
Munich,paleontologist Madelaine Boehme and her colleagues dig for
clues to the origins of humankind. What they discover is beyond
anything they ever imagined: the twelve-million-year-old bones of
Danuvius guggenmosi make headlines around the world. This ancient
ape defies prevailing theories of human history-his skeletal
adaptations suggest a new common ancestor between apes and humans,
one that dwelled in Europe, not Africa. Might the great apes that
traveled from Africa to Europe before Danuvius's time be the key to
understanding our own origins? All this and more is explored in
Ancient Bones. Using her expertise as a paleoclimatologist and
paleontologist, Boehme pieces together an awe-inspiring picture of
great apes that crossed land bridges from Africa to Europe millions
of years ago, evolving in response to the challenging conditions
they found. She also takes us behind the scenes of her research,
introducing us to former theories of human evolution (complete with
helpful maps and diagrams), and walks us through musty museum
overflow storage where she finds forgotten fossils with yellowed
labels, before taking us along to the momentous dig where she and
the team unearthed Danuvius guggenmosi himself-and the incredible
reverberations his discovery caused around the world. Praise for
Ancient Bones: "Readable and thought-provoking. Madelaine Boehme is
an iconoclast whose fossil discoveries have challenged
long-standing ideas on the origins of the ancestors of apes and
humans."-Steve Brusatte, New York Times-bestselling author of The
Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs "An inherently fascinating,
impressively informative, and exceptionally thought-provoking
read."-Midwest Book Review "An impressive introduction to the
burgeoning recalibration of paleoanthropology."-Kirkus
Reviews(starred review)
The astonishing new story of human origins Was Darwin wrong when he
traced our origins to Africa? The Real Planet of the Apes makes the
explosive claim that it was in Europe, not Africa, where apes
evolved the most important hallmarks of our human lineage. In this
compelling and accessible book, David Begun, one of the world's
leading paleoanthropologists, transports readers to an epoch in the
remote past when the Earth was home to many migratory populations
of ape species. Begun draws on the latest astonishing discoveries
in the fossil record, as well as his own experiences conducting
field expeditions, to offer a sweeping evolutionary history of
great apes and humans. He tells the story of how one of the
earliest members of our evolutionary group evolved from lemur-like
monkeys in the primeval forests of Africa. Begun then vividly
describes how, over the next ten million years, these hominoids
expanded into Europe and Asia and evolved climbing and hanging
adaptations, longer maturation times, and larger brains. As the
climate deteriorated in Europe, these apes either died out or
migrated south, reinvading the African continent and giving rise to
the lineages of African great apes, and, ultimately, humans.
Presenting startling new insights, The Real Planet of the Apes
fundamentally alters our understanding of human origins.
Research on the evolution of higher intelligence rarely combines
data from fields as diverse as paleontology and psychology. In this
volume we seek to do just that, synthesizing the approaches of
hominoid cognition, psychology, language studies, ecology,
evolution, paleoecology and systematics toward an understanding of
great ape intelligence. Leading scholars from all these fields have
been asked to evaluate the manner in which each of their topics of
research inform our understanding of the evolution of intelligence
in great apes and humans. The ideas thus assembled represent a
comprehensive survey of the various causes and consequences of
cognitive evolution in great apes. The Evolution of Thought will
therefore be an essential reference for graduate students and
researchers in evolutionary psychology, paleoanthropology and
primatology.
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