The First Human

In this dynamic account award-winning science writer Ann Gibbons chronicles an extraordinary quest to answer the most primal of questions: When and where was the dawn of humankind?Following four intensely competitive international teams of scientists in a heated race to find the missing linkthe fossil of the earliest human ancestorGibbons ventures to Africa where she encounters a fascinating array of fossil hunters: Tim White the irreverent Californian who discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia; French paleontologist Michel Brunet who uncovers a skull in Chad that could date the beginnings of humankind to seven million years ago; and two other groupsone led by zoologist Meave Leakey the other by British geologist Martin Pickford and his French paleontologist partner Brigitte Senutwho enter the race with landmark discoveries of their own. Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting The First Human reveals the perils and the promises of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.