Richard E. Leakey

Roger Lewin

Louis S. Leakey

What new discoveries reveal about the emergence of our species and its possible future.

What New Discoveries Reveal about the Emergence of Our Species and Its Possible Future

Origins

Richard Leakey's personal account of his fossil hunting and landmark discoveries at Lake Turkana, his reassessment of human prehistory based on new evidence and analytic techniques, and his profound pondering of how we became "human" and what being "human" really means.

In Search of What Makes Us Human

Origins Reconsidered

Man, His Origins, Nature and Future

People of the Lake

Chronicling five times in the history of the earth in which more than half of all living species disappeared in a geological instant, a geological study states that we are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction and presents supporting evidence. Reprint.

Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind

The Sixth Extinction

Bethwell A. Ogot

Actes Du 8e Congrès Panafricain de Préhistoire Et Des Etudes Du Quaternaire

wie wir wurden, was wir sind

Die Suche nach dem Menschen

Cites five previous mass extinctions on the planet while explaining that the human race may be the first to trigger its own destruction through irresponsible practices

Frederick E. Grine

John G Fleagle

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 behavioral limitations) can be inferred from the postcranial bones that have been attributed to Homo habilis and Homo erectus? Still other issues relate to growth, development and life history strategies, and the biological and archeological evidence for diet and behavior in early Homo. It is often argued that dietary change played an important role in the origin and early evolution of our genus, with stone tools opening up scavenging and hunting opportunities that would have added meat protein to the diet of Homo. Still other issues relate to the environmental and climatic context in which this genus evolved.

Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo

The First Humans

John J. Shea

Andrea L. Baden

For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of the issues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed - their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin dispersal part of a broader faunal expansion of African mammals northward? What route or routes did dispersing populations take?

Richard E. Leakey

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