The fossil chronicles : how two controversial discoveries changed our view of human evolution /

Falk (Florida State Univ.), a physical anthropologist whose research focuses on the evolution of the brain and cognition in humans and other primates, has written an excellent book that details several important 20th-century discoveries of hominin (prehuman) fossils. More than that, the author presents a lively examination of how the science of human ancestry is supposed to work, but often does not. Two finds take center stage: the 1924 discovery of the Taung child in South Africa, and the 2003 discovery of the three-and-a-half-foot-tall woman, widely known as Hobbit, on Flores Island, Indonesia. Falk herself played (and continues to play) a major role in the unfolding story of Hobbit (and at least seven other individuals), which Falk and other paleoanthropologists contend represents a new species (Homo floresiensis). A competing view is that the small-statured individuals represent microcephalic modern humans. Evidence is shifting decidedly toward the former proposition, but Falk's point is that deeply rooted scientific beliefs--for example, that Homo sapiens must be the only extant human species--have consistently retarded the growth of paleoanthropological knowledge. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Interested laypersons, scientists, and students of all levels. M. J. O'Brien University of Missouri--Columbia

Falk, an anthropologist with the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, N.M., explores two key discoveries and the fallout they caused among paleoanthropologists regarding their significance for human evolution: the Taung child in South Africa in 1924 and the skeleton nicknamed Hobbit, found on Flores Island, Indonesia, in 2004. The author, closely involved with the latter discovery, vividly captures the excitement of uncovering new knowledge and the passion scientists bring to their work, placing each find in the broader context of its day (doubts about Taung, for instance, followed from the 1912 Pilodown Man hoax), and examining what each find teaches us about ourselves and where we come from. Falk's tone is conversational-regarding Hobbit, she quotes from her diary, "Yippee Skippee. She ain't a microcephalic!" -but frequently gives way to dense passages of data. The book is most enlightening in its treatment of the personal politics and rivalries that accompany the scientific process, the internecine quarrels over the specifics of evolution even among scientists who agree on the theory's broad outlines, and how "scientists. can be as emotionally invested in their explanations of human origins as religious fundamentalists are in theirs. After all, the topic literally entails matters of life and death." 30 illus. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.