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Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind by [Kermit Pattison]

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Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind Kindle Edition

by Kermit Pattison (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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"Riveting. ... Pattison's uncanny ability [is] to write evocatively about science. ... In this, he is every bit as good as the best scientist writers." —New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"Brilliant. ... A work of staggering depth." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

A decade in the making, Fossil Men is a scientific detective story played out in anatomy and the natural history of the human body: the first full-length account of the discovery of a startlingly unpredicted human ancestor more than a million years older than Lucy

It is the ultimate mystery: where do we come from? In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White uncovered a set of ancient bones in Ethiopia’s Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the resulting skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus—nicknamed “Ardi”—was an astounding 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than the world-famous “Lucy.” The team spent the next 15 years studying the bones in strict secrecy, all while continuing to rack up landmark fossil discoveries in the field and becoming increasingly ensnared in bitter disputes with scientific peers and Ethiopian bureaucrats. When finally revealed to the public, Ardi stunned scientists around the world and challenged a half-century of orthodoxy 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. But the discovery of Ardi wasn’t just a leap forward in understanding the roots of humanity--it was an attack on scientific convention and the leading authorities of human origins, triggering an epic feud about the oldest family skeleton.

In Fossil Men, acclaimed journalist Kermit Pattison brings us a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including White, an uncompromising perfectionist whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant whose deep expertise about teeth rivaled anyone on Earth; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist with radical insights into human locomotion; Berhane Asfaw, who survived imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopia’s most senior paleoanthropologist; Don Johanson, the discoverer of Lucy, who had a rancorous falling out with the Ardi team; and the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology.

Based on a half-decade of research in Africa, Europe and North America, Fossil Men is not only a brilliant investigation into the origins of the human lineage, but the oldest of human emotions: curiosity, jealousy, perseverance and wonder.

Print length

544 pages
Language

English
Publisher

William Morrow
Publication date

November 10, 2020
File size

41587 KB
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From the Publisher

Review

"Big personalities, simmering turmoil, and fascinating popular science."

-- "Kirkus Reviews" --This text refers to the audioCD edition.

About the Author

Kermit Pattison is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Fast Company, Runners World, and Time, among many other publications. He spent more than half a decade doing research for Fossil Men, a large portion of which was spent in the field in Ethiopia with Tim White's team. This is his first book. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Roger Wayne served in the Air Force as a radio and television broadcast journalist in South Korea and won several awards before obtaining a BA degree in communications and journalism. He is an actor living in New York, narrating audiobooks, working on independent film projects, performing off Broadway, and auditioning for major network shows.

--This text refers to the audioCD edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01I9BDV3Y
Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; 1st edition (November 10, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 10, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 41587 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0062410288
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #140,262 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #8 in Biological Science of Fossils
- #13 in Paleontology (Kindle Store)
- #43 in Biology of Fossils

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467 ratings

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Shannon Capone Kirk

Riveting Scientific Story

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2020

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Really enjoyed this wildly educational and interesting book. I’m no scientist. And I have no idea what led me to read a book about paleoanthropology in the middle of a pandemic. But I have to say, out of all the books I’ve tried in these trying times, this one held my attention and kept me immersed on a topic I have never even really thought about. And now I want to read everything on this matter. Great book.

41 people found this helpful

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Unclebob53703.

Up to date and fascinating

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2020

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I found this to be an excellent overview of the field work and science of the last couple decades. I read the books by Leakey and Johanson back in college, and was looking for something a little more up to date. The book discusses the fossils and the arguments about them, but is mainly about the people finding and studying them. I remember Tim White from the book Lucy, and he's the main character here, warts and all. The most interesting thing to me was the emergence of Ethiopia as a scientific community, not just as a place to dig up fossils. I found the book to be both informative and enjoyable, and an excellent "sequel" to the earlier books.

19 people found this helpful

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The Mysteries of Human Origins

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2020

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The many unanswered questions concerning human evolution create numerous opportunities for pioneering scientific research, and also generate fierce debates over conflicting theories. In this fascinating book, the author takes the reader into the field in Ethiopia with renowned scientists searching for fossils, and also provides a useful background about the history of paleoanthropology. The "star" of the book is controversial anthropologist Tim White, who a New York Times' reviewer of this book described as a combination of Indiana Jones and Tony Soprano. The author follows White's efforts (along with a team of high powered scientists) to analyze and understand a 4.4 million year old humanoid fossil discovery named "Ardi," which may provide evidence challenging our current understanding about human evolution. The author makes this subject compelling, and I found it difficult to put this book down. I was amazed at how much we still do not know about the physical world of our human ancestors (climate, geology, vegetation, etc.), as well as the actual evolution of our uniquely human physical and mental characteristics. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in human origins.

13 people found this helpful

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Art Shapiro

Digging

Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2021

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This book should be read by anyone who wants to know what doing field science is all about. The title is a triple-entendre, referring to (i) actual fossils of the human lineage, (ii) the men who search for them, and (iii) researchers wedded to the old ways and resistant to new (mainly molecular) methods.
Science is a human activity, which is to say it is done by human beings, all of whom fall far short of the glory of God. The main players in this real-life drama are all flawed in one way or another. Certainly the focal character, Tim White if UC Berkeley, is. He is the living embodiment of what the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler called "the fine art of making enemies." Many, but not all, of his travails in pursuing hominin material in Ethiopia are his own fault, but others come literally with the territory.
Paleoanthropology or human paleontology is notorious for attracting researchers with big egos and insatiable drives for publicity and acclaim. The contempotary rivalries echo the 19th-century "bone wars" pitting Edward Drinker Cope against Othniel Charles Marsh (see "The Bonehunters' Revenge" by David Rains Wallace (1999) as a companion read to this volume). Those bone warriors were fighting over priority in discovering and naming new dinosaurs in the American West. As in "Fossil Men," public interest was very high and the difficult conditions in the field created something of an "Indiana Jones" mystique to the endeavor.
Beyond the personal and the sensational, this book deals pretty well with the philosophical and methodological issues in human paleontology. Paleo is inseparable from systematics (classification), and in paleo all one has got to work with is the morphology. But the criteria for deciding what is a species or a genus remain a matter of art, not science, informed by one's philosophy of systematics; some people are "splitters" and some are "lumpers." Ideally one would have large enough samples to be able to evaluate within-population variation. One can do that with abundant things like Devonian brachiopods. But hominin fossils are always rare and usually fragmentary. So a species is what researcher X says it is, but researcher Y is free to disagree, and probably will. The circumstances favor the splitter, who can always announce something "New!" and "Exciting!" to the eager media and public and has an incentive to do so.
On p.38 there is a reference to doing field work at "temperatures over 150." One can get such readings by placing a thermometer on the ground in the sun in hot deserts, but the hottest ambient air temperature of record is in the mid-130s (there are several claimants, with Death Valley currently favored). Even the 130s can be rapidly fatal to unprotected human beings, and 150 would surely be. Working in Ethiopia can be dangerous, but not THAT dangerous. You are much more likely to be shot or snakebit than to have your brain cooked.
At any rate, a paleo page-turner. Make up your own mind about Ardi.

11 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Worth the wait

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2021

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This is an impressive and entertaining book about a topic that has never interested me, particularly. Having done a few brief stints in the archeological field as a volunteer, in the south west US, I knew about the exacting, time consuming work with brushes and tiny picks. The dust from the screens, the excitement of finding something that "meant" something. The importance of photos and drawings, right then and there, and the necessary labels for every single artifact. I knew something about the heat, and discomfort, and exhaustion at night, quite minor compared to the Ethiopian "digs." Now I have a different understanding of the passion that drives the "fossil men" and women. The "fossil hunters." And the enormous support crew of folks that make The Hunt possible, and those who are devoted to making sense of those treasures from the deep past. Kermit Pattison's skill, experience, patience, respect for the science - all of that brings this story together. He somehow explained decades of recent research and even tied in a few centuries of us humans being insanely fascinated (and thick headed) about our own beginnings.
This is a book I will probably read again, simply because of what I learned the first time through, and want to understand better. But mostly because the passion, frustration and humor are intertwined in such a masterful way. I was especially pleased with the efforts of the scant few who insisted on making Ethiopians the scientists and experts in their own country, when white supremacy and colonial thinking is still the accepted way of doing things.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Pelican

If only it stuck to the fossils

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 31, 2021

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The fossils are fascinating. The people aren’t. Much too much about them.

3 people found this helpful

Neil Taylor

Well researched overarching summary of the latest finds

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 15, 2021

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Like all palaeontologist the authors use the research that reinforces their own findings.

J.D.

Fast delivery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 10, 2021

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Good book

gwen turner

interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2021

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good

MIHIR K MOITRA

A SEMINAL WORK NOT JUST ON 'PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOTY' BUT ALSO ON HUMAN EVOLUTION

Reviewed in India on March 17, 2021

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A DIFFICULT SUBJECT HANDLED WITH THE EASE OF A THRILLER WRITER. IT HAS A OVER ARCHING COVERAGE OF GEOLOGICAL SPAN, WITHIN WHICH HUMAN EVOLUTION AND ANTHROPOLOGY HAS BEEN DEALT WITH IN CONSIDERAABLE DETAILS. MY ONLY REGRET IS THAT THE PHENOMENAL ADVANCES IN GENOMIC ANALYSIS ON THE SUBJECT HAS NOT RECEIVED ITS FAIR SHARE.
HOWEVER, THAT IN NO WAY HAS AFFECTED THE QUALITY AND CHARACTER OF THIS BOOK.
MIHIR KUMAR MOITRA

One person found this helpful

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