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A carregar... The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humanspor G. J. Sawyer, Viktor Deak
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Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. An odd mix of fluff and highly technical jargon with little in between. The book consists of descriptions of 22 extinct human ancestors with each one starting off with a vignette of a day in the life of that species. What follows that is a description of the fossil fragments, where they were found (locality 247 of the Toros Menalla formation), an exhaustive list of other animal fossils that were found with the hominid fossils, etc. One thing that struck me is how few and fragmentary the fossils are that all this is based on. When we get to the Classification section we generally find that the author of this section has major issues with how the fossils have been classified and doubts that many of the 22 species listed are even valid. Each species also has a reconstruction of his face based on a fossil skull, even though most of the species don't have complete skulls among their remains. Missing link has always been such an annoying term. This book beautifully illustrates why. In The Last Human, 22 transitional species of hominids are described and discussed. The entries are in chronological order, from Sahelanthropus to Homo sapien, with extra attention on some of the more popular species (especially Australopithecus afarensis, aka Lucy). The authors list the bones found and their locations, describe what the bones can tell us about the size, stature, appearance, and abilities of these ancestors. In addition to parsing out the remains, the authors present incredibly life-like illustrations of each species. This is the most unique part of the book and is well worth the purchase price. The captions here were a bit aggravating (the author of captions engaged in quite a bit more conjecture than he did in the main texts). This book would be an excellent addition to the library of anyone interested in physical anthropology or human origins and would be a great recommended text for an anthropology class. A basic understanding of osteology and anthropology are needed to fully enjoy this book. Would've been an outstanding and astonishing book had I been able to decipher the more technical ends of archeology and anthropology. On it's own, not understanding many of the references, it was still an interesting read. The reconstructions from the bones are simply amazing. Having been taught the traditional evolution of species concepts, it was refreshing to discover that many branches of hominids co-existed, so how we ended up with just one branch at this time is a bit of a mystery. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
Prémios
"This book tells the story of human evolution, the epic of Homo sapiens and its colorful precursors and relatives. The story begins in Africa, six to seven million years ago, and encompasses twenty-two known human species, of which Homo sapiens is the sole survivor. Illustrated with spectacular, three-dimensional scientific reconstructions portrayed in their natural habitat - the result of creative collaboration between physical anthropologist G.J. Sawyer of the American Museum of Natural History and paleoartist Viktor Deak, in consultation with experts from around the world - the book is both a guide to extinct human species and an astonishing hominid family photo album."--Jacket. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)569.9Natural sciences and mathematics Fossils & prehistoric life Mammals HominidaeClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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Human paleontology is something everybody is interested in; I certainly can’t claim any expertise here, but it was instructive to have all this material in one handy reference source. It will be out of date fairly soon, of course (despite a 2007 publication date). The only obvious flaw I could find is the “short stories” sometimes do not mesh with the technical descriptions; for example, a “story” will depict something as fully bipedal while the technical description will note that the limb fossils support a normally quadrupedal gait with only occasional bipedalism. I suspect there may not have been much communication between the editors here.
This has a fairly high list price, which is not surprising given the number of color illustrations, but I was able to get mine on remainder for about 50% off. I’d recommend it if you have any interesting in the subject. ( )