The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human EvolutionTwo 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Of Paleopolitics and Missing Links | 9 |
Taungs Checkered Past | 40 |
Sulcal Skirmishes | 59 |
Bones to Pick | 188 |
Notes | 199 |
References | 231 |
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Common terms and phrases
adult ancestors apelike apes appeared Arthur Keith 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 discovered discovery Dmanisi Dubois 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 Indonesia island Java Jungers Laron LB1’s endocast LB1’s skull LB1’s virtual endocast LBr's Liang Bua lived lunate sulcus Mallinckrodt microcephalic microcephalic endocasts Mike Morwood million years ago missing link modern humans Nature Neanderthals occipital Oosterzee 2007 paleoanthropology paper Piltdown Pithecanthropus primitive Raymond Dart reconstruction relatively remains Science scientific scientists Scooter Shipman skeleton South Africa species specimens stegodonts stone tools suggested sulcal sulci Taung Taung’s endocast teeth tion Tobias University of Witwatersrand Wood and Lonergan