Table of Contents

Introduction / 3 Chapter 1: Rocks, Time, and Fossils / 7 Chapter 2: Evolutionary Processes / 19 Chapter 3: The Tree of Life / 33 Chapter 4: In the Beginning / 44 Chapter 5: The Paleozoic: "Ancient Life" / 53 Chapter 6: The Age of Dinosaurs / 80 Chapter 7: The Age of Mammals / 113 Chapter 8: Of Whales and Primates / 135 Chapter 9: Walkers and Toolmakers / 149 Chapter 10: A Cognitive Revolution / 178 Acknowledgments / 205 Bibliography / 207 Index / 219

About the Author

Ian Tattersall is a curator in the division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Trained in archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, and in vertebrate paleontology at Yale, Tattersall has concentrated his research since the 1960s in three main areas: the analysis of the human fossil record and its integration with evolutionary theory, the origin of human cognition, and the study of the ecology and systematics of the lemurs of Madagascar. He is also a prominent interpreter of human paleontology to the public.