Roger Lewin

In Patterns in Evolution, noted science journalist Roger Lewin explores how genetic information is providing new insight into evolutionary events: scientists are now able to study evolutionary change at the molecular level and reconstruct evolutionary lineages based on changes in DNA. With this new ability, they are overthrowing established ideas about which organisms are closely related and solving puzzles that had previously seemed beyond their reach. Lewin looks at how these new techniques are being used to explore a wide range of issues, from those regarding the deepest past to those concerned with the most recent present - from characterizing the universal ancestor of all life to tracking the trail of infection of the AIDS virus. The techniques have proved especially useful to anthropologists in their attempts to unravel the origins, both ancient and modern, of the human species. . Evolutionary biologists put the new genetic tools to especially creative use in their studies of ecology and animal behavior, which lead to fresh perspectives on why species diverge and new species emerge. Lewin shows how the tools are supplying answers to questions as diverse as why some turtles migrate thousands of miles to breed, why species have particular mating patterns, and how the interplay of geology and climate determine the evolution of new species. Finally, Lewin looks at how scientists are resurrecting the DNA from animals long dead, including 5000-year-old mummies and 95-million-year-old insects trapped in amber, to give concrete answers to questions about the past. He shows how wolf skins stored in museums are guiding conservation efforts, how human remains from thousands of years ago are shedding light on ancient mating patterns, and how long-buried fossils are tempting scientists to undertake the challenge of recovering dinosaur DNA. A skilled storyteller, Roger Lewin brings to vivid life the investigations that are revealing not just the history of life, but the mechanisms of its evolution.

Where and when did modern humans (Homo sapiens) first appear? Who were our immediate evolutionary ancestors? What features distinguish modern humans and how did these features arise? These questions have gripped the scientific community and the public since the mid-nineteenth century, when the discovery of Neanderthal Man and the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species rocked the foundations of long-held beliefs on the subject. Many new findings, speculations, and reevaluations have sharpened our views of modern human origins since then. Nevertheless, the controversy continues, as the patchy fossil record and new evidence derived from genetic techniques have given rise to competing theories. Are we the result of a single uninterrupted lineage, with each distinct species of human leading directly to the next? Or, do species such as the Neanderthal represent offshoots of an evolutionary tree that died out without leaving successors? Did modern humanity arise roughly contemporaneously in different parts of the world or from a single species in a single location? And how do biological, linguistic, artistic, and technological factors distinguish Homo sapiens from near and distant relatives? At stake in the argument is nothing less than the very definition of what it means, biologically and culturally, to be human. In this vividly written volume, award-winning science author Roger Lewin describes the discoveries, the intellectual clashes, and the often conflicting interpretations of evidence that have shaped the current debate on modern humanity's origin. Readers will learn of astonishing findings (the original Neanderthal bones, and provocative theories (the genetically-derived speculation that we are all the children of a single African female who lived about 200,000 years ago), as well as one preposterous hoax (the Piltdown Man). Readers will also see the evolution of the modern science of paleoanthropology, which brings molecular biology, genetics, population biology, linguistics, and other disciplines into the search for the distinctive stamp of Homo sapiens in artifacts and skeletal remains.

Charts the course of evolution and traces advances that have been made in the field.

Richard E. Leakey is rewriting the history of our species. At Koobi Fora, on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, he and his team are piecing together not only the anatomy of our ancient ancestors, but their social behavior as well. Heir to one of the most renowned names in anthropology, Leakey and his colleagues have discovered more fossils in a few short years than most anthropologists do in a lifetime. At Lake Turkana, Leakey, his wife, Meave, and their fossil hunting team have unearthed over 300 bones belonging to more than 180 of our early forebears. These include one of the most significant finds of this decade, skull 1470, which suggests that the human line may have emerged in Africa an amazing four million years ago. Now, in people of the lake, Leakey tells how he uncovered these clues to our prehistoric past and what they reveal about our emotional and intellectual life. A brilliant scientific detective story by one of the great anthropologists of our time, PEOPLE OF THE LAKE provides a new perspective not only on mankind’s evolutionary past, but on the meaning of human nature itself. BOOK JACKET.

Investigates the set of rules that lie at the root of all complex systems.

There have been five great extinctions in the long history of life on earth, the most recent 65 million years ago, when all dinosaur species perished in an astonishingly brief period of time. Each of these great extinctions was unimaginably catastrophic - at least 65 percent of all species living vanished in a geological instant; in the Permian extinction, nearly 95 percent of all species were obliterated. The agency for these extinctions, the why, is hotly debated - sudden climate change, asteroids, evolutionary inadequacy - but the patterns are remarkably consistent. Now, as Leakey and Lewin show with inarguable logic based on irrefutable scientific evidence, the sixth great extinction is underway. And this time the cause is beyond dispute: By the lowest estimate, thirty thousand species are wiped out by human agency every year - a rate that matches the patterns of the other five great extinctions with frightening exactitude. As the authors show, such dramatic and overwhelming extinction threatens the entire complex fabric of life on earth, including the species at fault, Homo sapiens. Unless we come to realize the devastating consequence of our rapacious behavior, we will follow the mastodon, the great auk, the carrier pigeon, and our other victims into the oblivion of extinction.

In this book, Franco Berardi presents an examination of new forms of alienation in our never-off, plugged-in culture - and a clarion call for a 'conspiracy of estranged people'.