The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution

Hardcover first edition 1995. Jacket photograph by The American Museum of Natural History Slide library (top) Donald C. Johnson PhD, Institute of Human Origins (bottom). Dust jacket in very good condition only slight scuffing and very minor edge ware. Boards are clean and unmarked. Pages are all clean and unmarked. One of the most remarkable fossil finds in history occurred in Laetoli, Tanzania, in 1974, when anthropologist Andrew Hill (diving to the ground to avoid a lump of elephant dung thrown by a colleague) came face to face with a set of ancient footprints captured in stone--the earliest recorded steps of our far-off human ancestors, some three million years old. Today we can see a recreation of the making of the Laetoli footprints at the American Museum of Natural History, in a stunning diorama which depicts two of our human forebears walking side by side through a snowy landscape of volcanic ash. But how do we know what these three-million-year-old relatives looked like? How have we reconstructed the eons-long journey from our first ancient steps to where we stand today? In short, how do we know what we think we know about human evolution? Ian Tattersall The Fossil Trail Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Oxford University Press (March 16, 1995) Language: English ISBN-10: 0195061012 ISBN-13: 978-0195061017