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From Fossils To Mind
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Download or read book From Fossils to Mind written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2023-02-23 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Fossils to Mind, Volume 275 in the Progress in Brain Research series, presents chapters on a variety of interesting topics, including What could our premammalian ancestors hear, see, smell, and touch? A review of ten years of research about cynodont paleoneurology, Endocasts of ornithopod dinosaurs: anatomy and comparison, Adaptationism and Structuralism in Brain Evolution Research, Genomic approaches for tracing the evolution of brain ageing and neurodegenerative diseases, Investigating the Coevolution of Language and Tools in the Brain: An ALE Meta-analysis of Neural Activation During Syntactic Processing and Tool Use, and more. Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors Presents the latest release in Progress in Brain Research serials Updated release includes the latest information on From Fossils and Mind
Book Synopsis Preparing Dinosaurs by : Caitlin Donahue Wylie
Download or read book Preparing Dinosaurs written by Caitlin Donahue Wylie and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the work and workers in fossil preparation labs reveals the often unacknowledged creativity and problem-solving on which scientists rely. Those awe-inspiring dinosaur skeletons on display in museums do not spring fully assembled from the earth. Technicians known as preparators have painstakingly removed the fossils from rock, repaired broken bones, and reconstructed missing pieces to create them. These specimens are foundational evidence for paleontologists, and yet the work and workers in fossil preparation labs go largely unacknowledged in publications and specimen records. In this book, Caitlin Wylie investigates the skilled labor of fossil preparators and argues for a new model of science that includes all research work and workers. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, Wylie shows that the everyday work of fossil preparation requires creativity, problem-solving, and craft. She finds that preparators privilege their own skills over technology and that scientists prefer to rely on these trusted technicians rather than new technologies. Wylie examines how fossil preparators decide what fossils, and therefore dinosaurs, look like; how labor relations between interdependent yet hierarchically unequal collaborators influence scientific practice; how some museums display preparators at work behind glass, as if they were another exhibit; and how these workers learn their skills without formal training or scientific credentials. The work of preparing specimens is a crucial component of scientific research, although it leaves few written traces. Wylie argues that the paleontology research community's social structure demonstrates how other sciences might incorporate non-scientists into research work, empowering and educating both scientists and nonscientists.
Book Synopsis Human Paleoneurology by : Emiliano Bruner
Download or read book Human Paleoneurology written by Emiliano Bruner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents an integrative review of paleoneurology, the study of endocranial morphology in fossil species. The main focus is on showing how computed methods can be used to support advances in evolutionary neuroanatomy, paleoanthropology and archaeology and how they have contributed to creating a completely new perspective in cognitive neuroscience. Moreover, thanks to its multidisciplinary approach, the book addresses students and researchers approaching human paleoneurology from different angles and for different purposes, such as biologists, physicians, anthropologists, archaeologists and computer scientists. The individual chapters, written by international experts, represent authoritative reviews of the most important topics in the field. All the concepts are presented in an easy-to-understand style, making them accessible to university students, newcomers and also to anyone interested in understanding how methods like biomedical imaging, digital anatomy and computed and multivariate morphometrics can be used for analyzing ontogenetic and phylogenetic changes according to the principles of functional morphology, morphological integration and modularity.
Download or read book Fossil by Fossil written by Sara Levine and published by Millbrook Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What kind of dinosaur had a bony ridge that rose up from the back of its skull and three horns poking up from the front? A triceratops! This lively picture book will keep readers guessing as they find out what they might look like if they were a variety of different dinosaur species. Full color.
Download or read book Evolution written by Donald R. Prothero and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 891 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Donald R. Prothero’s Evolution is an entertaining and rigorous history of the transitional forms and series found in the fossil record. Its engaging narrative of scientific discovery and well-grounded analysis has led to the book’s widespread adoption in courses that teach the nature and value of fossil evidence for evolution. Evolution tackles systematics and cladistics, rock dating, neo-Darwinism, and macroevolution. It includes extensive coverage of the primordial soup, invertebrate transitions, the development of the backbone, the reign of the dinosaurs, and the transformation from early hominid to modern human. The book also details the many alleged “missing links” in the fossil record, including some of the most recent discoveries that flesh out the fossil timeline and the evolutionary process. In this second edition, Prothero describes new transitional fossils from various periods, vividly depicting such bizarre creatures as the Odontochelys, or the “turtle on the half shell”; fossil snakes with legs; and the “Frogamander,” a new example of amphibian transition. Prothero’s discussion of intelligent design arguments includes more historical examples and careful examination of the “experiments” and observations that are exploited by creationists seeking to undermine sound science education. With new perspectives, Prothero reframes creationism as a case study in denialism and pseudoscience rather than a field with its own intellectual dynamism. The first edition was hailed as an exemplary exploration of the fossil evidence for evolution, and this second edition will be welcome in the libraries of scholars, teachers, and general readers who stand up for sound science in this post-truth era.
Book Synopsis Ape Mind, Old Mind, New Mind by : John . Wylie
Download or read book Ape Mind, Old Mind, New Mind written by John . Wylie and published by Bookbaby. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ape Mind, Old Mind, New Mind asserts that the remarkable aspect of Darwin's evolution by sexual selection is that it is driven merely by the desire for a trait, in this case the desire for justice. The author realized that sexual selection is not only driven by the peahen's desire for the peacock's tail, but also by the peacock's desire to be desired for his tail (i.e., vanity). What gave sexual selection the creative power to launch and then sustain our hominin tribe was, and still is, the additive effect of both the desire for justice and the desire to be just, both passed down together tightly engaged in the pioneering of rightness and wrongness. Indeed, the fact that our minds are comprised of capacities determined by motivations that involve both the actor and the object of the action has much to do with both our expansive consciousness and our linguistic virtuosity. We are at once the seer and the seen, condemner and condemned, lover and loved. However, because human evolution has left us so intricately fraught with these condensed motivations, our minds are also vulnerable to the unraveling of emotion into the spinning feedback scream of mental illness. Dr. Wylie focuses on the role of natural selection in the conversion from submission and dominance in apes to obedience and authority in humans. Under the protective shield of justice, groups of mated pair-bonds could evolve the productive benefits of coordinating and dividing the labor of child care and food gathering. At the end of the day, those groupings of relationships that "believed" in the rules of this organic social structure would be naturally selected. The procreative benefits to individuals within a given group immersed in this obedience-authority system would exceed any benefits of pursuing their own dominance. The will to dominate in the ape mind transformed into the authority of justice in the early human (old) mind by migrating from individuals to dwelling within the thin ether of relationships between individuals; no one could see it, but all could feel it. This invisible but biologically based will could be said to possesses intentions, i.e.: a spirit…the human spirit. Human bonds animated by this still evolving spirit ultimately would become more powerful than those of blood, tribe or country.
Download or read book First Steps written by Jeremy DeSilva and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the W.W. Howells Book Prize from the American Anthropological Association and named one of the best science books of 2021 by Science News “DeSilva takes us on a brilliant, fun, and scientifically deep stroll through history, anatomy, and evolution, in order to illustrate the powerful story of how a particular mode of movement helped make us one of the most wonderful, dangerous and fascinating species on Earth.”—Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University and author of Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being “Breezy popular science at its best. . . . Makes a compelling case overall.”—Science News Blending history, science, and culture, a stunning and highly engaging evolutionary story exploring how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet’s dominant species. Humans are the only mammals to walk on two, rather than four legs—a locomotion known as bipedalism. We strive to be upstanding citizens, honor those who stand tall and proud, and take a stand against injustices. We follow in each other’s footsteps and celebrate a child’s beginning to walk. But why, and how, exactly, did we take our first steps? And at what cost? Bipedalism has its drawbacks: giving birth is more difficult and dangerous; our running speed is much slower than other animals; and we suffer a variety of ailments, from hernias to sinus problems. In First Steps, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva explores how unusual and extraordinary this seemingly ordinary ability is. A seven-million-year journey to the very origins of the human lineage, First Steps shows how upright walking was a gateway to many of the other attributes that make us human—from our technological abilities, our thirst for exploration, our use of language–and may have laid the foundation for our species’ traits of compassion, empathy, and altruism. Moving from developmental psychology labs to ancient fossil sites throughout Africa and Eurasia, DeSilva brings to life our adventure walking on two legs. Delving deeply into the story of our past and the new discoveries rewriting our understanding of human evolution, First Steps examines how walking upright helped us rise above all over species on this planet. First Steps includes an eight-page color photo insert.
Book Synopsis The Fossil Chronicles by : Dean Falk
Download or read book The Fossil Chronicles written by Dean Falk and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-10-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With wit and authority, Falk tells the parallel stories of two fossil discoveries that surprised the world, revealing the larger significance of these finds. Her lively recounting combines new historical research with her first-hand involvement in controversial interpretations."—Pat Shipman, author of The Animal Connection and The Man Who Found the Missing Link “An absorbing and engagingly personal account, by a leading participant, of two of the major “brain wars” that have raged along the path to our current understanding of human evolution.”--Ian Tattersall, author of The Fossil Trail and Human Origins “In The Fossil Chronicles, Falk engages us with a ‘tale of two brains’. While navigating the surfaces of these ancient brains, she reveals the convolutions of scientific controversies and how personalities and paleopolitics shape the ways we think about human evolution.”—Nina G. Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History
Book Synopsis The Dinosaur Artist by : Paige Williams
Download or read book The Dinosaur Artist written by Paige Williams and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this 2018 New York Times Notable Book,Paige Williams "does for fossils what Susan Orlean did for orchids" (Book Riot) in her account of one Florida man's attempt to sell a dinosaur skeleton from Mongolia--a story "steeped in natural history, human nature, commerce, crime, science, and politics" (Rebecca Skloot). In 2012, a New York auction catalogue boasted an unusual offering: "a superb Tyrannosaurus skeleton." In fact, Lot 49135 consisted of a nearly complete T. bataar, a close cousin to the most famous animal that ever lived. The fossils now on display in a Manhattan event space had been unearthed in Mongolia, more than 6,000 miles away. At eight-feet high and 24 feet long, the specimen was spectacular, and when the gavel sounded the winning bid was over $1 million. Eric Prokopi, a thirty-eight-year-old Floridian, was the man who had brought this extraordinary skeleton to market. A onetime swimmer who spent his teenage years diving for shark teeth, Prokopi's singular obsession with fossils fueled a thriving business hunting, preparing, and selling specimens, to clients ranging from natural history museums to avid private collectors like actor Leonardo DiCaprio. But there was a problem. This time, facing financial strain, had Prokopi gone too far? As the T. bataar went to auction, a network of paleontologists alerted the government of Mongolia to the eye-catching lot. As an international custody battle ensued, Prokopi watched as his own world unraveled. In the tradition of The Orchid Thief, The Dinosaur Artist is a stunning work of narrative journalism about humans' relationship with natural history and a seemingly intractable conflict between science and commerce. A story that stretches from Florida's Land O' Lakes to the Gobi Desert, The Dinosaur Artist illuminates the history of fossil collecting--a murky, sometimes risky business, populated by eccentrics and obsessives, where the lines between poacher and hunter, collector and smuggler, enthusiast and opportunist, can easily blur. In her first book, Paige Williams has given readers an irresistible story that spans continents, cultures, and millennia as she examines the question of who, ultimately, owns the past.
Download or read book Fossil Fungi written by Thomas N Taylor and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fungi are ubiquitous in the world and responsible for driving the evolution and governing the sustainability of ecosystems now and in the past. Fossil Fungi is the first encyclopedic book devoted exclusively to fossil fungi and their activities through geologic time. The book begins with the historical context of research on fossil fungi (paleomycology), followed by how fungi are formed and studied as fossils, and their age. The next six chapters focus on the major lineages of fungi, arranging them in phylogenetic order and placing the fossils within a systematic framework. For each fossil the age and provenance are provided. Each chapter provides a detailed introduction to the living members of the group and a discussion of the fossils that are believed to belong in this group. The extensive bibliography (~ 2700 entries) includes papers on both extant and fossil fungi. Additional chapters include lichens, fungal spores, and the interactions of fungi with plants, animals, and the geosphere. The final chapter includes a discussion of fossil bacteria and other organisms that are fungal-like in appearance, and known from the fossil record. The book includes more than 475 illustrations, almost all in color, of fossil fungi, line drawings, and portraits of people, as well as a glossary of more than 700 mycological and paleontological terms that will be useful to both biologists and geoscientists. First book devoted to the whole spectrum of the fossil record of fungi, ranging from Proterozoic fossils to the role of fungi in rock weathering Detailed discussion of how fossil fungi are preserved and studied Extensive bibliography with more than 2000 entries Where possible, fungal fossils are placed in a modern systematic context Each chapter within the systematic treatment of fungal lineages introduced with an easy-to-understand presentation of the main characters that define extant members Extensive glossary of more than 700 entries that define both biological, geological, and mycological terminology
Book Synopsis Evolution: the Grand Experiment by : Dr. Carl Werner
Download or read book Evolution: the Grand Experiment written by Dr. Carl Werner and published by New Leaf Publishing Group. This book was released on 2007 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Darwin's book on evolution admitted that "intermediate links" were "perhaps the most obvious and serious objection to the theory" of evolution. Darwin recognized that the fossils collected by scientists prior to 1859 did not correspond with his theory of evolution, but he predicted that his theory would be confirmed as more and more fossils were found. One hundred and fifty years later, Evolution: The Grand Experiment critically examines the viability of Darwin's theory"--
Download or read book Locked in Time written by Dean R. Lomax and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fossils allow us to picture the forms of life that inhabited the earth eons ago. But we long to know more: how did these animals actually behave? We are fascinated by the daily lives of our fellow creatures—how they reproduce and raise their young, how they hunt their prey or elude their predators, and more. What would it be like to see prehistoric animals as they lived and breathed? From dinosaurs fighting to their deaths to elephant-sized burrowing ground sloths, this book takes readers on a global journey deep into the earth’s past. Locked in Time showcases fifty of the most astonishing fossils ever found, brought together in five fascinating chapters that offer an unprecedented glimpse at the real-life behaviors of prehistoric animals. Dean R. Lomax examines the extraordinary direct evidence of fossils captured in the midst of everyday action, such as dinosaurs sitting on their eggs like birds, Jurassic flies preserved while mating, a T. rex infected by parasites. Each fossil, he reveals, tells a unique story about prehistoric life. Many recall behaviors typical of animals familiar to us today, evoking the chain of evolution that links all living things to their distant ancestors. Locked in Time allows us to see that fossils are not just inanimate objects: they can record the life stories of creatures as fully alive as any today. Striking and scientifically rigorous illustrations by renowned paleoartist Bob Nicholls bring these breathtaking moments to life.
Download or read book Fossil Men written by Kermit Pattison and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Riveting. ... Pattison's uncanny ability [is] to write evocatively about science. ... In this, he is every bit as good as the best scientist writers." —New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "Brilliant. ... A work of staggering depth." —Minneapolis Star Tribune A decade in the making, Fossil Men is a scientific detective story played out in anatomy and the natural history of the human body: the first full-length account of the discovery of a startlingly unpredicted human ancestor more than a million years older than Lucy It is the ultimate mystery: where do we come from? In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White uncovered a set of ancient bones in Ethiopia’s Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the resulting skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus—nicknamed “Ardi”—was an astounding 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than the world-famous “Lucy.” The team spent the next 15 years studying the bones in strict secrecy, all while continuing to rack up landmark fossil discoveries in the field and becoming increasingly ensnared in bitter disputes with scientific peers and Ethiopian bureaucrats. When finally revealed to the public, Ardi stunned scientists around the world and challenged a half-century of orthodoxy about human evolution—how we started walking upright, how we evolved our nimble hands, and, most significantly, whether we were descended from an ancestor that resembled today’s chimpanzee. But the discovery of Ardi wasn’t just a leap forward in understanding the roots of humanity--it was an attack on scientific convention and the leading authorities of human origins, triggering an epic feud about the oldest family skeleton. In Fossil Men, acclaimed journalist Kermit Pattison brings us a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including White, an uncompromising perfectionist whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant whose deep expertise about teeth rivaled anyone on Earth; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist with radical insights into human locomotion; Berhane Asfaw, who survived imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopia’s most senior paleoanthropologist; Don Johanson, the discoverer of Lucy, who had a rancorous falling out with the Ardi team; and the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology. Based on a half-decade of research in Africa, Europe and North America, Fossil Men is not only a brilliant investigation into the origins of the human lineage, but the oldest of human emotions: curiosity, jealousy, perseverance and wonder.
Book Synopsis The Making of the Mind by : Ronald T. Kellogg
Download or read book The Making of the Mind written by Ronald T. Kellogg and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the findings of recent neuroscience, a psychologist reveals what sets humans apart from all other species, offering a fascinating exploration of our marvelous and sometimes frightening cognitive abilities and potentials. According to human genome research, there is a remarkable degree of overlap in the DNA of humans and chimpanzees. So what accounts for the rapid development of human culture throughout history and the extraordinary creative and destructive aspects of human behavior that make us so different from our primate cousins? Kellogg explores in detail five distinctive parts of human cognition. These are the executive functions of working memory; a social intelligence with "mind-reading" abilities; a capacity for symbolic thought and language; an inner voice that interprets conscious experiences by making causal inferences; and a means for mental time travel to past events and imagined futures. He argues that it is the interaction of these five components that results in our uniquely human mind. This is especially true for three quintessentially human endeavors-morality, spirituality, and literacy, which can be understood only in light of the whole ensemble's interactive effects. Kellogg recaps the story of the human mind and speculates on its future. How might the Internet, 24/7 television, and smart phones affect the way the mind functions?
Book Synopsis Marvelous Microfossils by : Patrick De Wever
Download or read book Marvelous Microfossils written by Patrick De Wever and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: De Wever's ode to the invisible world around us allows readers to peer directly into a minute microcosm with massive implications, even traversing eons to show us how life arose on Earth.
Book Synopsis The Star-Crossed Stone by : Ken McNamara
Download or read book The Star-Crossed Stone written by Ken McNamara and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the four hundred thousand years that humanity has been collecting fossils, sea urchin fossils, or echinoids, have continually been among the most prized, from the Paleolithic era, when they decorated flint axes, to today, when paleobiologists study them for clues to the earth’s history. In The Star-Crossed Stone, Kenneth J. McNamara, an expert on fossil echinoids, takes readers on an incredible fossil hunt, with stops in history, paleontology, folklore, mythology, art, religion, and much more. Beginning with prehistoric times, when urchin fossils were used as jewelry, McNamara reveals how the fossil crept into the religious and cultural lives of societies around the world—the roots of the familiar five-pointed star, for example, can be traced to the pattern found on urchins. But McNamara’s vision is even broader than that: using our knowledge of early habits of fossil collecting, he explores the evolution of the human mind itself, drawing striking conclusions about humanity’s earliest appreciation of beauty and the first stirrings of artistic expression. Along the way, the fossil becomes a nexus through which we meet brilliant eccentrics and visionary archaeologists and develop new insights into topics as seemingly disparate as hieroglyphics, Beowulf, and even church organs. An idiosyncratic celebration of science, nature, and human ingenuity, The Star-Crossed Stone is as charming and unforgettable as the fossil at its heart.
Book Synopsis Rereading the Fossil Record by : David Sepkoski
Download or read book Rereading the Fossil Record written by David Sepkoski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rereading the Fossil Record presents the first-ever historical account of the origin, rise, and importance of paleobiology, from the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1980s. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, David Sepkoski shows how the movement was conceived and promoted by a small but influential group of paleontologists and examines the intellectual, disciplinary, and political dynamics involved in the ascendency of paleobiology. By tracing the role of computer technology, large databases, and quantitative analytical methods in the emergence of paleobiology, this book also offers insight into the growing prominence and centrality of data-driven approaches in recent science.
