You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Anthropology of Extinction offers compelling explorations of issues of widespread concern.
There are some issues in human paleontology that seem to be timeless. Most deal with the origin and early evolution of our own genus – something about which we should care. Some of these issues pertain to taxonomy and systematics. How many species of Homo were there in the Pliocene and Pleistocene? How do we identify the earliest members the genus Homo? If there is more than one Plio-Pleistocene species, how do they relate to one another, and where and when did they evolve? Other issues relate to questions about body size, proportions and the functional adaptations of the locomotor skeleton. When did the human postcranial “Bauplan” evolve, and for what reasons? What behaviors (and what...
Human Structure is an innovative introduction to human gross anatomy with a twofold approach to view the basics of anatomy from a broad scientific perspective and to explain the facts of form and function in terms and concepts that minimize the usual confusion and anxiety of beginning anatomy studies. Functional, comparative, and developmental anatomy are ingeniously woven into a single explanatory perspective, presenting human anatomy as an intelligible whole rather than as a heap of disconnected facts to be memorized. As a result, Human Structure is suitable not only for first-year medical students but also for undergraduates in premedical or biological science courses, for students in par...
"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
This second edition will be an edited volume of interest to those who do research and teach about the evolution of primates. It aims to convey to primatologists, anthropologists, palaeontologists, and neuroscientists the most recent studies of primate phylogeny, the anthropoid fossil record, the evolution of the primate visual system, and the origin of the anthropoid social systems. This title includes a CD-ROM and color figures.
Why do we find polar bears only in the Arctic and penguins only in the Antarctic? Why do oceanic islands often have many types of birds but no large native mammals? As Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace travelled across distant lands studying the wildlife they both noticed that the distribution of plants and animals formed striking patterns - patterns that held strong clues to the past of the planet. The study of the spatial distribution of living things is known as biogeography. It is a field that could be said to have begun with Darwin and Wallace. In this lively book, Denis McCarthy tells the story of biogeography, from the 19th century to its growth into a major field of interdisci...
Over the course of the past decade, there has been an enormous augmentation in the amount of information available on the lemurs of Madagascar. These advances are closely coupled with an increase in the number of national and international researchers working on these animals. As a result, Madagascar has emerged as one of the principal sites of primatological studies in the world. Furthermore, the conserva tion community has a massive interest in the preservation of the natural habitats of the island, and lemurs serve as one of the symbols of this cause. Between 10 and 14 August 1998, the XVIIth International Primatology Society (IPS) Congress was held in Antananarivo, Madagascar. For a country that about a decade ago was largely closed to foreign visitors, this Congress constituted a massive event for the Malagasy scientific community and was assisted by about 550 primatolo gists from 35 different countries. Naturally, given the venue and context of the Con gress, many of the presentations dealt with lemurs and covered a very wide breadth of subjects.
This book examines how Westerners understood and processed Madagascar and its environment during the nineteenth century. Madagascar’s unique ecosystem crafted its reputation as a strange place full of unusual species. Westerners, however, often minimized Madagascar’s peculiar features to stress the commonality of its fauna and flora with the world. The attempt to understand the island through science led to a domestication of its environment that created the image of a tame and known world capable of being controlled and used by Western powers. At the heart of the exploration of Madagascar and its transformation in Western eyes from a strange world to a cash crop colony were missionaries and naturalists who relied upon global experiences to master the island by normalizing the peculiar qualities of Madagascar’s environment. This book reveals how the environment played a dominant role in understanding the island and its people, and how current environmental debates have evolved from earlier policies and discussions about the environment.
How did we become the linguistic, cultured, and hugely successful apes that we are? Our closest relatives--the other mentally complex and socially skilled primates--offer tantalizing clues. In Tree of Origin nine of the world's top primate experts read these clues and compose the most extensive picture to date of what the behavior of monkeys and apes can tell us about our own evolution as a species. It has been nearly fifteen years since a single volume addressed the issue of human evolution from a primate perspective, and in that time we have witnessed explosive growth in research on the subject. Tree of Origin gives us the latest news about bonobos, the make love not war apes who behave so...