A book for everyone fascinated by the huge beasts that once roamed the earth, Rhinoceros Giants: The Paleobiology of the Indricotheres introduces a prime candidate for the largest land mammal that eve
The last decade has witnessed remarkable discoveries and advances in our understanding of the tool using behaviour of animals. Wild populations of capuchin monkeys have been observed to crack open nuts with stone tools, similar to the skills of chimpanzees and humans. Corvids have been observed to use and make tools that rival in complexity the behaviours exhibited by the great apes. Excavations of the nut cracking sites of chimpanzees have been dated to around 4-5 thousand years ago. Tool Use in Animals collates these and many more contributions by leading scholars in psychology, biology and anthropology, along with supplementary online materials, into a comprehensive assessment of the cognitive abilities and environmental forces shaping these behaviours in taxa as distantly related as primates and corvids.
Although Neandertals lived in Europe and western Asia for more than 200,000 years, we know surprisingly little about them or about their everyday lives. Evidence of their behavior is largely derived f
A Companion to Paleoanthropology offers a broad overview of the central research on fossil hominid evidence around the world and its implications for human origins. Begun provides a guide to the study
In 2008, Professor Lee Berger--with the help of his curious 9-year-old son--discovered two remarkably well preserved, two-million-year-old fossils of an adult female and young male, known as Australopithecus sediba; a previously unknown species of ape-like creatures that may have been a direct ancestor of modern humans. This discovery of has been hailed as one of the most important archaeological discoveries in history. The fossils reveal what may be one of humankind's oldest ancestors.Berger believes the skeletons they found on the Malapa site in South Africa could be the "Rosetta stone that unlocks our understanding of the genus Homo" and may just redesign the human family tree.Berger, an Eagle Scout and National Geographic Grantee, is the Reader in Human Evolution and the Public Understanding of Science in the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.The focus of the book will be on the way in which we can apply new thinking to fam
The bestselling DK Readers series has a fresh new look featuring redesigned jackets and interiors, and up-to-date vocabulary throughout. In DK Readers, stunning photographs combine with lively illustr
The bestselling DK Readers series has a fresh new look featuring redesigned jackets and interiors, and up-to-date vocabulary throughout. In DK Readers, stunning photographs combine with lively illustr
Africa does not give up its secrets easily. Buried there lie answers about the origins of humankind. And yet, though vital clues still remain hidden, scientists have over the last century transformed
Our early ancestors lived in small groups and worked actively to preserve social equality. As they created larger societies, however, inequality rose, and by 2500 bce truly egalitarian societies were
The contribution of Neandertals to the biological and cultural emergence of early modern humans remains highly debated in anthropology. Particularly controversial is the long-held view that Neandertals in Western Europe were replaced 30,000 to 40,000 years ago by early modern humans expanding out of Africa. This book contributes to this debate by exploring the diets and foraging patterns of both Neandertals and early modern humans. Eugène Morin examines the faunal remains from Saint-Césaire in France, which contains an exceptionally long and detailed chronological sequence, as well as genetic, anatomical and other archaeological evidence to shed new light on the problem of modern human origins.
This textbook for a first course in paleoanthropology examines the fossil evidence for human evolution and explains how that evidence is interpreted in modern paleoanthropological research. There is s
There have been many books, movies, and even TV commercials featuring Neandertals--some serious, some comical. But what was it really like to be a Neandertal? How were their lives similar to or diffe
A group of special interest to mammalogists, taxonomists, and systemicists, ungulates have proven difficult to classify. This comprehensive review of the taxonomic relationships of artiodactyls and pe
Like the better-known Smilodon, or saber-tooth cat, the scimitar-tooth cats of the New World were fierce predators that killed and consumed the largest of North America's species. This volume synthes
They survived by their wits in a snowbound world, hunting, and sometimes being hunted by, animals many times their size. By flickering firelight, they drew bison, deer, and mammoths on cavern walls- v
What was life like for the woolly mammoth, who roamed the Earth starting over 100,000 years ago? What did these big shaggy beasts eat? Did they have enemies? Did they have families? Did they have fun?
The unique fossils featured in Caves of the Ape-Men were excavated at cave-sites which today are clustered within the first World Heritage Site to be proclaimed in South Africa under the auspices of U
In the geological blink of an eye, mammals moved from an obscure group of vertebrates into a class of planetary dominance. Why? J. David Archibald's provocative study identifies the fall of dinosaurs
