The First Human : The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors
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Overview
In this dynamic account, award-winning science writer Ann Gibbons chronicles an extraordinary quest to answer the most primal of questions: When and where was the dawn of humankind?Following four intensely competitive international teams of scientists in a heated race to find the "missing link"-the fossil of the earliest human ancestor-Gibbons ventures to Africa, where she encounters a fascinating array of fossil hunters: Tim White, the irreverent Californian who discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia; French paleontologist Michel Brunet, who uncovers a skull in Chad that could date the beginnings of humankind to seven million years ago; and two other groups-one led by zoologist Meave Leakey, the other by British geologist Martin Pickford and his French paleontologist partner, Brigitte Senut-who enter the race with landmark discoveries of their own. Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human reveals the perils and the promises of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781400076963
- ISBN-10: 140007696X
- Publisher: Anchor Books
- Publish Date: April 2007
- Dimensions: 7.96 x 5.26 x 0.69 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.68 pounds
- Page Count: 336
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