The Wisdom Of Bones. In Search Of Human Bones

Cover Type: Softcover
Book Condition: Fine
Jacket Condition: None Issued
Publisher: Weidenfeld And Nicholson
Publisher Place: London
Publisher Year: 1996
Edition: Reprint

Description: 270 pages. Book appears to have hardly been read and is in Fine condition throughout. This Is The Story Of The Excavation Of The 'Nariokotome Boy', Found In Kenya In 1984.

Publishers Description: "Fascinating. . . .  As engaging an explanation of how scientists study fossil bones as any I have ever read." --John R. Alden, Philadelphia InquirerIn 1984 a team of paleoanthropologists on a dig in northern Kenya found something extraordinary: a nearly complete skeleton of Homo erectus, a creature that lived 1.5 million years ago and is widely thought to be the missing link between apes and humans. The remains belonged to a tall, rangy adolescent male. The researchers called him "Nariokotome boy." In this immensely lively book, Alan Walker, one of the lead researchers, and his wife and fellow scientist Pat Shipman tell the story of that epochal find and reveal what it tells us about our earliest ancestors. We learn that Nariokotome boy was a highly social predator who walked upright but lacked the capacity for speech. In leading us to these conclusions, The Wisdom of the Bones also offers an engaging chronicle of the hundred-year-long search for a "missing link," a saga of folly, heroic dedication, and inspired science. "Brilliantly captures [an] intellectual odyssey. . . .  One of the finest examples of a practicing scientist writing for a popular audience."             --Portland Oregonian     "A vivid insider's perspective on the global efforts to document our own ancestry."--Richard E. Leakey

ISBN: 0297816705