As co-founder of the expedition that discovered Lucy, and leader of most of the first site-surveys in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia, Jon Kalb has years of experience with the region, its politics, and the scientists involved in the excavations. A participant himself in the "bone wars" that accompanied these discoveries, Kalb recounts the cutthroat competition and back stabbing that were often part of the media-highlighted race to find the oldest hominid fossil. He weaves this story in the rich fabric of Ethiopian society and politics, the plight of the regions peoples, and the international maneuverings for control of the fossil finds.
Jon Kalb, born August 17, 1941, in Houston, Texas, is a research geologist (ret) with the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory (Texas Memorial Museum), University of Texas at Austin. He received a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory in 1968, a graduate fellowship from Johns Hopkins University in 1969, and a B Sc. from American University in 1970.
Kalb was a founder of the International Afar Research Expedition that recovered the 3.3 million year old Lucy skeleton, and later director of the Ethiopia-based mission that pioneered explorations in the Middle Awash, revealing some of the most prolific deposits bearing early hominid fossils and artifacts in the world. Discoveries included a nearly complete hyper-robust skull of a 600,000-year-old pre-Neanderthal.
Kalb has authored numberous scientific publications on Ethipia's Afar Depression, which he has studied for 30 years.
