The Wisdom of the Bones: In Search of Human Origins

"Fascinating. . . . As engaging an explanation of how scientists study fossil bones as any I have ever read." —John R. Alden, Philadelphia Inquirer

In 1984 a team of paleoanthropologists on a dig in northern Kenya found something extraordinary: a nearly complete skeleton of Homo erectus, a creature that lived 1.5 million years ago and is widely thought to be the missing link between apes and humans. The remains belonged to a tall, rangy adolescent male. The researchers called him "Nariokotom...