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Title details for The First Human by Ann Gibbons - Available

The First Human

The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors

by Ann Gibbons
Renée Raudman
Audiobook
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This dynamic chronicle of the race to find the "missing links" between humans and apes transports readers into the highly competitive world of fossil hunting and into the lives of the ambitious scientists intent on pinpointing the dawn of humankind.


The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits. The First Human is the story of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and of the intense rivalries that propel them.


An award-winning science writer, Ann Gibbons introduces the various maverick fossil hunters and describes their most significant discoveries in Africa. There is Tim White, the irreverent and brilliant Californian whose team discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived more than 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia. If White can prove that it was hominid—an ancestor of humans and not of chimpanzees or other great apes—he can lay claim to discovering the oldest known member of the human family. As White painstakingly prepares the bones, the French paleontologist Michel Brunet comes forth with another, even more startling find. Well known for his work in the most remote and hostile locations, Brunet and his team uncover a stunning skull in Chad that could set the date of the beginnings of humankind to almost seven million years ago. Two other groups—one led by the zoologist Meave Leakey, the other by the British geologist Martin Pickford and his partner, Brigitte Senut, a French paleontologist—enter the race with landmark discoveries of other fossils vying for the status of the first human ancestor.


Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the intense challenges of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 15, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400122387
      • File size: 285320 KB
      • Duration: 09:54:24

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      May 15, 2007
      For almost 100 years, paleontologists, archaeologists, geologists, molecular anthropologists, and adventurers have searched for the "missing link," the earliest prehuman. Repeatedly, fossilized bones have been picked up, analyzed, and acclaimed, only to be superseded by newly discovered but older specimens or, alternately, eliminated from the human family lineage by sophisticated molecular analyses. Despite the title, First Human is a book about personalities who just happen to be biological anthropologists. These fossil hunters seem to spend more time fighting, stealing from, attacking one another, and/or hiding materials than they do studying their finds. The thread of historic discovery is lost among such sensational descriptions as famous zoologist Meave Leakey's exceptional beauty or (presumably fictional) reconstructions of the first thoughts of each researcher at the time of his or her most important find. For simple amusement, this somewhat extreme peek at the interactions that comprise the small world of a specialized scientific discipline is a great choice. Renée Raudman fluently reads the jargon-filled text with only a few pronunciation errors. This book should be enjoyed by many popular science fans. Recommended for medium-sized to large public and academic libraries.I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Boone, IA

      Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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