Masters of the Planet

Tattersall (cocurator, Spitzer Hall of Human Origins, American Museum of Natural History) has authored and coauthored over 22 books on human evolution and is currently working on a multivolume project to document the major fossils in the human fossil record. He calls this book a progress report on human paleoanthropology, in which he pulls together the newest discoveries and current theories on the origins of humanity. Most of us learned that human evolution was a single line from the earliest upright apes to Homo sapiens, but Tattersall introduces readers to the wide range of species, many that lived at the same time, that are contenders for places on our ancestral tree. Even more interesting is his discussion of the factors that made us such a successful species and how these traits developed. He extrapolates from the limited physical evidence available what types of environments our precursors lived in as well as their social and mental abilities.