Fossil Men, Kermit Pattison
Fossil Men, Kermit Pattison
4 Rating(s)
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Fossil Men
The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind

Author: Kermit Pattison

Narrator: Roger Wayne

Unabridged: 15 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 11/10/2020

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

""A rip-roaring tale, Fossil Men is one of those rare books that can be a prism through which to view the world, exposing the fabric of the Earth and illuminating the Tree of Life."" —New York Times bestselling author Peter Nichols
A behind-the-scenes account of the shocking discovery of the skeleton of “Ardi,” a human ancestor far older than Lucy - a find that shook the world of paleoanthropology and radically altered our understanding of human evolution.In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White—”the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology”—uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia’s Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus, was 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than “Lucy,” then the oldest known human ancestor. The findings challenged many assumptions 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—and repudiated a half-century of paleoanthropological orthodoxy. Fossil Men is the first full-length exploration of Ardi, the fossil men who found her, and her impact on what we know about the origins of the human species. It is a scientific detective story played out in anatomy and the natural history of the human body. Kermit Pattison brings into focus a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including one of the world’s greatest fossil hunters, Tim White—an exacting and unforgiving fossil hunter whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant who sometimes didn’t bother going home at night to devote more hours to science; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist; Berhane Asfaw, who survived imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopia’s most senior paleoanthropologist and who fought for African scientists to gain equal footing in the study of human origins; and the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology.An intriguing tale of scientific discovery, obsession and rivalry that moves from the sun-baked desert of Africa and a nation caught in a brutal civil war, to modern high-tech labs and academic lecture halls, Fossil Men is popular science at its best, and a must read for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

About Kermit Pattison

Kermit Pattison is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Fast Company, and Inc., among many other publications. He spent more a decade doing research for Fossil Men, a large portion of which was spent in the field in Ethiopia with the team that discovered Ardi. This is his first book. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader on December 16, 2020

As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, one of my majors in undergrad was anthropology, and a nonfiction book covering the oldest human skeleton, as well as the “fossil hunters” involved in lifelong searches, is my cup of tea, especially when it’s this well-written and exciting. The drama present in the......more

Goodreads review by David on October 03, 2021

This fascinating book is about paleoanthropologist Tim White, and his team's discovery of Ardi--short for Ardipithecus ramidus. Tim White had a reputation--a pretty bad reputation, actually--of being a very blunt, salty, arrogant scientist. But he was the most learned, obsessive, meticulous, aggress......more

Goodreads review by Ms.pegasus on May 20, 2021

Who were these people? The ones who lived in a world populated by animals whose fossils were displayed at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History; the ones who fashioned the Native American relics his father brought home from a road excavation. Tim White was always traveling in his imagination bac......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on September 01, 2021

This book tells an intriguing story of our distant ancestors, along with the evolving interpretations of which bones should be considered as members of our family tree. Our understanding has come a long way since the early visions of ape-men, and the story has taken some interesting twists and turns......more

Goodreads review by Cindy on November 17, 2020

Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind by Kermit Pattison: A group led by the renowned fossil-hunter Tim White discovered a skeleton in the Afar region of Ethiopia in the mid-1990’s that significantly altered scientists’ understanding of human origins, but simulta......more