Donald C. Johanson

"Lucy is a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton who has become the spokeswoman for human evolution. She is perhaps the best known and most studied fossil hominid of the twentieth century, the benchmark by which other discoveries of human ancestors are judged."--From Lucy's LegacyIn his New York Times bestseller, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, renowned paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson told the incredible story of his discovery of a partial female skeleton that revolutionized the study of human origins. Lucy literally changed our understanding of our world and who we come from. Since that dramatic find in 1974, there has been heated debate and--most important--more groundbreaking discoveries that have further transformed our understanding of when and how humans evolved. In Lucy's Legacy, Johanson takes readers on a fascinating tour of the last three decades of study--the most exciting period of paleoanthropologic investigation thus far. In that time, Johanson and his colleagues have uncovered a total of 363 specimens of Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy's species, a transitional creature between apes and humans), spanning 400,000 years. As a result, we now have a unique fossil record of one branch of our family tree--that family being humanity--a tree that is believed to date back a staggering 7 million years.Focusing on dramatic new fossil finds and breakthrough advances in DNA research, Johanson provides the latest answers that post-Lucy paleoanthropologists are finding to questions such as: How did Homo sapiens evolve? When and where did our species originate? What separates hominids from the apes? What was the nature of Neandertal and modern human encounters? What mysteries about human evolution remain to be solved?Donald Johanson is a passionate guide on an extraordinary journey from the ancient landscape of Hadar, Ethiopia--where Lucy was unearthed and where many other exciting fossil discoveries have since been made--to a seaside cave in South Africa that once sheltered early members of our own species, and many other significant sites. Thirty-five years after Lucy, Johanson continues to enthusiastically probe the origins of our species and what it means to be human.From the Hardcover edition.

"The day after her 56th birthday, Caroline MacAfee, a skilled carpenter, is told the network wants her architect daughter Jamie to replace her as host on their family-based home construction TV show. The resulting rift couldn't come at a worse time. Soon after, Jamie's father and his new wife die in a car accident. Now Jamie is struggling with their orphaned toddler while Caroline cares for his aging father, and both need to rebuild their relationship"--Amazon.com.

Jenny Lowe, a primatologist studying chimpanzees, is running for her life with the child of a murdered fellow scientist after a civil war explodes. Jenny grabbing the notebooks of the primatologist who's been killed. She brings the girl to Chicago to await the discovery of her relatives. The girl is fifteen and lovely, her name is Lucy. Realizing that the child has no living relatives, Jenny begins to care for her as her own. When she reads the notebooks written by Lucy's father, she discovers that the adorable, lovely, magical Lucy is the result of an experiment. She is part human, part ape, a hybrid human being.

Dans ce véritable roman d'aventures scientifiques, Donald Johanson raconte sa découverte, en 1986, d'un morceau de coude et d'un éclat de mâchoire de deux millions et demi d'années. Il retrace aussi "l'histoire de l'enquête qui a suivi et de la polémique qui a secoué la communauté paléoanthropologique."