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 |
Sick Hobbits Quarrelsome Scientists | 7 |
Of Paleopolitics and Missing Links | 9 |
A Fossil to Rival Piltdown | 20 |
Taungs Checkered Past | 40 |
Sulcal Skirmishes | 59 |
Once | 76 |
Flos Little Brain | 109 |
Bones to Pick | 188 |
Notes | 199 |
Glossary of Neuroanatomical Terms | 227 |
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adult anatomy ancestors animals apelike apes appeared Arthur Keith australopithecines Australopithecus africanus bones brain evolution braincase cast cerebral cortex chimpanzee Clarke colleagues compared controversy cranial capacity cretins Dart with Craig Dart’s discovered discovery Dmanisi Dubois dwarfed early Homo ebu gogo Elliot Smith endo evolutionary evolved Falk figure film flakes Flores fossil record frontal lobes fundamentalists Hildebolt Hobbit Holloway hominin Homo erectus Homo floresiensis Homo sapiens human brain human evolution humanlike identified Indonesia interpretation island Jacob Java Jungers Kirk Komodo dragons lambdoid suture Laron LB1’s virtual endocast LBI's LBr's Liang Bua lived lunate sulcus Mallinckrodt microcephalic Mike Morwood million years ago missing link Nature Neanderthals paleoanthropology paper Paranthropus Piltdown Piltdown committee Pithecanthropus Raymond Dart recently reconstruction relatively remains Science scientific scientists Scooter Sir Arthur skeleton skull Soejono South Africa specimens stegodonts stone tools suggested sulci Taung Taung's endocast teeth tion Tobias University of Witwatersrand views