The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey

Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans

Chris Beard

348 pages, parution le 11/08/2006

Ajouter à une liste

Indisponible

Résumé

Taking us back roughly 45 million years into the Eocene, "the dawn of recent life," Chris Beard, a world-renowned expert on the primate fossil record, offers a tantalizing new perspective on our deepest evolutionary roots. In a fast-paced narrative full of vivid stories from the field, he reconstructs our extended family tree, showing that the first anthropoids--the diverse and successful group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans--evolved millions of years earlier than was previously suspected and emerged in Asia rather than Africa.

In The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey, Beard chronicles the saga of two centuries of scientific exploration in search of anthropoid origins, from the early work of Georges Cuvier, the father of paleontology, to the latest discoveries in Asia, Africa, and North America's Rocky Mountains. Against this historical backdrop, he weaves the story of how his own expeditions have unearthed crucial fossils--including the controversial primate Eosimias--that support his compelling new vision of anthropoid evolution. The only book written for a wide audience that explores this remote phase of our own evolutionary history, The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey adds a fascinating new chapter to our understanding of humanity's relationship to the rest of life on earth.

L'auteur - Chris Beard

Chris Beard is Curator and Head, Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History and winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant.

Sommaire

Preface
Missing Links and Dawn Monkeys
Toward Egypt's Sacred Bull
A Gem from the Willwood
The Forest in the Sahara
Received Wisdom
The Birth of a Ghost Lineage
Initial Hints from Deep Time
Ghost Busters
Resurrecting the Ghost
Into the African Melting Pot
Paleoanthropology and Pithecophobia
Notes
Bibliography

Voir tout

Replier

Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	University of California Press
Auteur(s)	Chris Beard
Parution	11/08/2006
Nb. de pages	348
Format	14,5 x 22
Couverture	Broché
Poids	588g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780520249868
ISBN13	978-0-520-24986-8