Quick Overview
Extensively revised and updated, the second edition of The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution offers a colorful history of fossil discoveries and a revealing insider's look at how these finds have been interpreted - and misinterpreted - through time. It covers the dramatic increase in the size and scope of the human fossil record as well as new techniques for analyzing and interpreting that record that have emerged in the thirteen intervening years since the first edition's publication. Author Ian Tattersall, Curator in the Division of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History, places the researchers and their discoveries within the context of their social and scientific milieus and reveals the many forces that shape our interpretation of fossil findings. The Fossil Trail provides an up-to-the-minute overview of paleoanthropological thought and discovery and presents our family tree as it is portrayed in the Spitzer Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History.
