The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human EvolutionUniversity of California Press, 3 oct 2011 - 280 páginas Two discoveries of early human relatives, one in 1924 and one in 2003, radically changed scientific thinking about our origins. Dean Falk, a pioneer in the field of human brain evolution, offers this fast-paced insider’s account of these discoveries, the behind-the-scenes politics embroiling the scientists who found and analyzed them, and the academic and religious controversies they generated. The first is the Taung child, a two-million-year-old skull from South Africa that led anatomist Raymond Dart to argue that this creature had walked upright and that Africa held the key to the fossil ancestry of our species. The second find consisted of the partial skeleton of a three-and-a-half-foot-tall woman, nicknamed Hobbit, from Flores Island, Indonesia. She is thought by scientists to belong to a new, recently extinct species of human, but her story is still unfolding. Falk, who has studied the brain casts of both Taung and Hobbit, reveals new evidence crucial to interpreting both discoveries and proposes surprising connections between this pair of extraordinary specimens. |
Índice
1 | |
1 Of Paleopolitics and Missing Links | 5 |
A Fossil to Rival Piltdown | 20 |
3 Taungs Checkered Past | 40 |
4 Sulcal Skirmishes | 59 |
5 Once upon a Hobbit | 76 |
6 Flos Little Brain | 109 |
7 Sick Hobbits Quarrelsome Scientists | 135 |
8 Whence Homo floresiensis? | 161 |
9 Bones to Pick | 188 |
Notes | 199 |
Glossary of Neuroanatomical Terms | 227 |
231 | |
253 | |
Otras ediciones - Ver todo
The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of ... Dean Falk Vista previa restringida - 2011 |
The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of ... Dean Falk Vista previa restringida - 2011 |
Términos y frases comunes
adult ancestors apelike apes appeared australopithecines Australopithecus africanus bipedal bones brain evolution Brain shape braincase cast cerebral cortex chimpanzee Clarke colleagues compared controversy convolutions cranial capacity cretins Dart with Craig Dart’s Darwin discovered discovery Dmanisi Dubois Dubois’s dwarfed early Homo ebu gogo Elliot Smith evolutionary evolved Falk figure film Flores fossil frontal lobes fundamentalists Hildebolt Hobbit hominins Homo erectus Homo floresiensis Homo habilis Homo sapiens human evolution humanlike images Indonesia island Java Jungers Laron Laron syndrome LB1’s endocast LB1’s skull LB1’s virtual endocast Liang Bua lived lunate sulcus Mallinckrodt microcephalic microcephalic endocasts Mike Morwood million years ago missing link Nature Neanderthals occipital paleoanthropologists paleoanthropology paper Piltdown Piltdown committee Pithecanthropus primitive Raymond Dart reconstruction relatively remains Science scientific scientists Scooter Shipman skeleton South Africa species specimens stegodonts stone tools suggested sulcal sulci suture Taung Taung’s endocast teeth tion Tobias University of Witwatersrand Wood and Lonergan