The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans » (1ST)

Chris Beard is Curator and Head, Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History and winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant.

"This could be the ultimate book on our origins. For the first time, Chris Beard sheds light on a hitherto little-known yet highly controversial area of paleontology—the search for the ancestry of monkeys, apes and, ultimately, humans."—Henry Gee, author of
In Search of Deep Time

"Beard's book is the Lucy of anthropoid origins—an adventure story of scientific discovery in exotic places that introduces the reader to some interesting personalities of primate paleontology."—John G. Fleagle, author of Primate Adaptation and Evolution

"The search for our origins does not stop with the first member of our own species, or even the first ape that stood upright. Our earliest primate ancestors also bequeathed us many of our most important features. Chris Beard offers a fascinating, personal survey of what we know about these delicate creatures, who ultimately gave rise to ourselves."—Carl Zimmer, author of Soul Made Flesh and Evolution

"Chris Beard's exciting fossil discoveries and his bold new ideas show us that our very early origins were in Asia and not, as previously thought, in Africa."—Alan Walker, coauthor of The Wisdom of the Bones

Publishers Weekly

In recent years, paleontologists have feuded over the origins-long assumed to be African-of our very distant ancestors, the anthropoid primates. Fossil expert Beard presents his controversial case for Asia in this dense chronicle. Searching in central China for bones from the Eocene epoch, Beard's assistant Wen Chaohua, a local farmer, found an extraordinarily intact fossil jaw of the tiny prosimian Eosimias ("dawn monkey"). This jaw, Beard believes, will link small Asian primates such as tarsiers with the distant anthropoid ancestors of humans. Not exactly the Bigfoot-like missing link of popular imagination, but as Beard notes wryly, "The dirty little secret of paleoanthropology is that, while there are plenty of missing links, they don't occur where most people think they do." Knowing his findings will create an "academic brouhaha," Beard spends 300 pages building an intricate case for his tarsier theory. To establish context and popularize the subject, he describes the work of Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and other noted paleontologists. But he also includes endless details about tiny skulls and their components, scientific conferences, global climate change hypotheses and the minutiae of Darwinist theory. Tales of harsh field expeditions make for good reading, and Beard's findings tell a startling scientific story, but information overload keeps this book from being suitable for most general readers. Illus. (Dec.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.