Overview

"Taking us back roughly 45 million years into the Eocene, 'the dawn of recent life', Chris Beard, a world-renowned expert on the primate fossil record, offers a tantalizing new perspective on our deepest evolutionary roots. In a fast-paced narrative full of vivid stories from the field, he reconstructs our extended family tree, showing that the first anthropoids - the diverse and successful group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans - evolved millions of years earlier than was previously suspected and emerged in Asia rather than Africa. In ""The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey"", Beard chronicles the saga of two centuries of scientific exploration in search of anthropoid origins, from the early work of Georges Cuvier, the father of paleontology, to the latest discoveries in Asia, Africa, and North America's Rocky Mountains. Against this historical backdrop, he weaves the story of how his own expeditions have unearthed crucial fossils - including the controversial primate Eosimias - that support his compelling new vision of anthropoid evolution. The only book written for a wide audience that explores this remote phase of our own evolutionary history, ""The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey"" adds a fascinating new chapter to our understanding of humanity's relationship to the rest of life on earth."

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9780520249868

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Reviews

An entertaining, erudite, and informative narrative.... Beard parlays his formidable knowledge, experience, and energy into an exciting, thoughtful, integrative, and well-written book. - Glenn C. Conroy, Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, Reviews Anyone interested in the history of the science of where we evolved from will appreciate and learn from The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey. - Bernard Wood, Geotimes [A]n absorbing and interesting read. I learned more about the both the early history of the primates and about the often prickly characters that unearthed them, in gruelling desert expeditions, than from any other book I have read. - R. I. M. Dunbar, Times Literary Supplement (tls) The story of The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey is not only interesting science but also a wonderful tale of perseverance and that essential for palaeontologists: good luck. - Douglas Palmer, New Scientist Beard is to be applauded for bringing this chapter of our family history to light. - Nina Jablonski, California Wild Beard's findings tell a startling scientific story. - Publishers Weekly

Demonstrates that there is still much to be discovered about primate origins and evolution. -- Sarah Elton Reviews In Anthropology 20070101 Interested readers who want to become better informed about early primate evolution should turn to K. C. Beard's The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey, an accessible, authoritative alternative. -- Richard F. Kay Science (AAAS) 20090828

Author Information

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

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