The Fossil Chronicles - by Dean Falk (Paperback)

About the Book

"With wit and authority, Falk tells the parallel stories of two fossil discoveries that surprised the world, revealing the larger significance of these finds. Her lively recounting combines new historical research with her first-hand involvement in controversial interpretations."--Pat Shipman, author of "The Animal Connection" and "The Man Who Found the Missing Link"
"An absorbing and engagingly personal account, by a leading participant, of two of the major "brain wars" that have raged along the path to our current understanding of human evolution."--Ian Tattersall, author of "The Fossil Trail" and "Human Origins"
"In "The Fossil Chronicles," Falk engages us with a 'tale of two brains'. While navigating the surfaces of these ancient brains, she reveals the convolutions of scientific controversies and how personalities and paleopolitics shape the ways we think about human evolution."--Nina G. Jablonski, author of "Skin: A Natural History"

Book Synopsis

Two 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.

From the Back Cover

"With wit and authority, Falk tells the parallel stories of two fossil discoveries that surprised the world, revealing the larger significance of these finds. Her lively recounting combines new historical research with her first-hand involvement in controversial interpretations."--Pat Shipman, author of The Animal Connection and The Man Who Found the Missing Link

"An absorbing and engagingly personal account, by a leading participant, of two of the major "brain wars" that have raged along the path to our current understanding of human evolution."--Ian Tattersall, author of The Fossil Trail and Human Origins

"In The Fossil Chronicles, Falk engages us with a 'tale of two brains'. While navigating the surfaces of these ancient brains, she reveals the convolutions of scientific controversies and how personalities and paleopolitics shape the ways we think about human evolution."--Nina G. Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History

Review Quotes

"Engaging and compelling. . . . Effective and affecting."--Andrew Kramer "Reports of the National Center for Science Education" (3/1/2013 12:00:00 AM)

"Brilliant. . . . Sparkles with scholarship and wit."-- "Nature" (10/6/2011 12:00:00 AM)

"Infectious. . . . This book provides a powerful reminder that fossils should hold value to those beyond sometimes argumentative paleoanthropologists."--Kristian J. Carlson, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg "Qtly Review Of Biology" (3/22/2013 12:00:00 AM)

"The book is part historical drama, part neurological crash course and part autobiography . . . . The combination is refreshing."-- "Wall Street Journal" (10/8/2011 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Dean Falk is a Senior Scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her previous books include Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origin of Language and Braindance, Revised and Expanded Edition: New Discoveries about Human Origins and Brain Evolution.