"Riveting. ... Pattison's uncanny ability [is] to write evocatively about science. ... In this, he is every bit as good as the best scientist writers." —New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"Brilliant. ... A work of staggering depth." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

A decade in the making, Fossil Men is a scientific detective story played out in anatomy and the natural history of the human body: the first full-length account of the discovery of a startlingly unpredicted human ancestor more than a million years older than Lucy

It is the ultimate mystery: where do we come

from? In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White uncovered a set of

ancient bones in Ethiopia’s Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the

resulting skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus—nicknamed

“Ardi”—was an astounding 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older

than the world-famous “Lucy.” The team spent the next 15 years studying the

bones in strict secrecy, all while continuing to rack up landmark fossil

discoveries in the field and becoming increasingly ensnared in bitter disputes

with scientific peers and Ethiopian bureaucrats. When finally revealed to the

public, Ardi stunned scientists around the world and challenged a half-century

of orthodoxy about human evolution—how we started walking upright, how we

evolved our nimble hands, and, most significantly, whether we were descended

from an ancestor that resembled today’s chimpanzee. But the discovery of Ardi wasn’t just a leap forward in

understanding the roots of humanity--it was an attack on scientific convention

and the leading authorities of human origins, triggering an epic feud about the

oldest family skeleton.

In Fossil Men, acclaimed journalist Kermit Pattison brings us

a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including White, an uncompromising

perfectionist whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his

propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant whose deep expertise

about teeth rivaled anyone on

Earth; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist with

radical insights into human locomotion; Berhane Asfaw, who survived

imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopia’s most senior paleoanthropologist; Don Johanson,

the discoverer of Lucy, who had a rancorous falling out with the Ardi team; and

the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology.

Based on a half-decade of research in Africa,

Europe and North America, Fossil Men is not only a brilliant investigation into the

origins of the human lineage, but the oldest of human emotions: curiosity,

jealousy, perseverance and wonder.