The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans

From Publishers Weekly
In recent years, paleontologists have feuded over the origins—long assumed to be African—of our very distant ancestors, the anthropoid primates. Fossil expert Beard presents his controversial case for Asia in this dense chronicle. Searching in central China for bones from the Eocene epoch, Beard's assistant Wen Chaohua, a local farmer, found an extraordinarily intact fossil jaw of the tiny prosimian Eosimias ("dawn monkey"). This jaw, Beard believes, will link small Asian primates such as tarsiers with the distant anthropoid ancestors of humans. Not exactly the Bigfoot-like missing link of popular imagination, but as Beard notes wryly, "The dirty little secret of paleoanthropology is that, while there are plenty of missing links, they don't occur where most people think they do." Knowing his findings will create an "academic brouhaha," Beard spends 300 pages building an intricate case for his tarsier theory. To establish context and popularize the subject, he describes the work of Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) and other noted paleontologists. But he also includes endless details about tiny skulls and their components, scientific conferences, global climate change hypotheses and the minutiae of Darwinist theory. Tales of harsh field expeditions make for good reading, and Beard's findings tell a startling scientific story, but information overload keeps this book from being suitable for most general readers. Illus. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Popular interest in human origins is strong, especially in the evolutionary fork splitting hominids from the great apes; however, there is less interest in the preceding evolutionary fork, which separated anthropoids (monkeys, apes, and humans) from prosimians (lemurs and tarsiers). Explaining when and where that happened is the controversial subject of this book because the author, a young vertebrate paleontologist at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, is apparently agitating this specialized field by challenging orthodox theories. Traditionalists believe the anthropoids evolved in North Africa in the late Eocene epoch (about 34 million years ago), but Beard touts China and the early Eocene (about 57 million years ago). Since this bone war turns on interpretations of finger-size fossils of jaws and teeth, passages in Beard's account can be textbook technical, but otherwise, it bows to historical personages of paleontology and includes incidents from Beard's interesting fossil-hunting expeditions around the world. Those two features are of perennial appeal to general-interest readers and enhance Beard's capable presentation of an overlooked topic. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


From Book News, Inc.
The real missing link in paleoanthropology is not so much in the fossil record for early humans, but in the fossil record of the first anthropoids, the common ancestors of monkeys, apes, and people, according to Beard (Curator and Head of the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History). He provides both an overview of 200 years of work looking for anthropoid origins and a recounting of his own work in the area, including the reaction to his controversial proposal that the earliest anthropoids originated in Asia (splitting of from Tarsiers in the Eocene). Writing for a general audience, he explains much of the basic science and competing theories of the paleoanthropology of early anthropoids and defends his Asia hypothesis, while simultaneously offering a window into the human drama that so often characterizes scientific competition and debate.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


Book Description
Taking us back roughly 45 million years into the Eocene, "the dawn of recent life," Chris Beard, a world-renowned expert on the primate fossil record, offers a tantalizing new perspective on our deepest evolutionary roots. In a fast-paced narrative full of vivid stories from the field, he reconstructs our extended family tree, showing that the first anthropoids-the diverse and successful group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans-evolved millions of years earlier than was previously suspected and emerged in Asia rather than Africa. In The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey, Beard chronicles the saga of two centuries of scientific exploration in search of anthropoid origins, from the early work of Georges Cuvier, the father of paleontology, to the latest discoveries in Asia, Africa, and North America's Rocky Mountains. Against this historical backdrop, he weaves the story of how his own expeditions have unearthed crucial fossils-including the controversial primate Eosimias-that support his compelling new vision of anthropoid evolution. The only book written for a wide audience that explores this remote phase of our own evolutionary history, The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey adds a fascinating new chapter to our understanding of humanity's relationship to the rest of life on earth. Illustrations: 14 color illustrations, 26 b/w photographs, 22 line illustrations


From the Back Cover
"This could be the ultimate book on our origins. For the first time, Chris Beard sheds light on a hitherto little-known yet highly controversial area of paleontology-the search for the ancestry of monkeys, apes and, ultimately, humans."-Henry Gee, author of In Search of Deep Time "Beard's book is the Lucy of anthropoid origins--an adventure story of scientific discovery in exotic places that introduces the reader to some interesting personalities of primate paleontology."-John G. Fleagle, author of Primate Adaptation and Evolution "The search for our origins does not stop with the first member of our own species, or even the first ape that stood upright. Our earliest primate ancestors also bequeathed us many of our most important features. Chris Beard offers a fascinating, personal survey of what we know about these delicate creatures, who ultimately gave rise to ourselves."-Carl Zimmer, author of Soul Made Flesh and Evolution "Chris Beard's exciting fossil discoveries and his bold new ideas show us that our very early origins were in Asia and not, as previously thought, in Africa."-Alan Walker, coauthor of The Wisdom of the Bones


About the Author
Chris Beard is Curator and Head, Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History and winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant.


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In this informative and engaging book, Beard (curator, vertebrate paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History) narrates his quest to find fossil evidence that documents the early origin of anthropoids, a group of primates that includes monkeys, apes, and hominids. Challenging the traditional viewpoint that Africa was the birthplace of simians in the Oligocene epoch, Beard argues that the earliest anthropoids emerged in Asia during the Paleocene epoch. He supports his bold theory by extrapolating from monkeylike fossils found in central China, including his own discovery of the pivotal but controversial specimen Eosimias from the middle Eocene epoch; its closest living counterpart is probably the pygmy marmoset, a New World monkey. Interpretations of eye and ear regions (when present), jaws, and teeth from fossil primates in both the late Paleocene, e.g., Altiatlasius, and Eocene eras strengthen Beard's theory. Beard also acknowledges other sites, models, discoveries, and hypotheses concerning the emergence and evolution of early primates. Numerous illustrations, as well as extensive notes and excellent maps and charts, enhance this fascinating volume. Highly recommended for all anthropology collections.-H. James Birx, SUNY at Geneseo Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.


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