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Book Progress #8

By laelaps on April 25, 2008.

I was able to get a few more pages out yesterday, although (say it with me now) not as many as I would have liked. I'm continuing to hammer away at the human evolution chapter as I feel that it's the most important, although if I'm not careful it could turn into a book by itself. I may hit a wall at some point, however, as I'm far more interested in early human evolution (i.e. australopithecines) than in recent prehistoric humans, and I don't want that bias to hinder the relevance of the chapter. (New sections are in bold).

Introduction

Huxley's rejoinder to Wilberforce at Oxford - Darrow puts Bryan in the hot seat - Behe's astrological mishap - One long argument - Flickering candles in the dark - Monstrous myths - Evolutionary archetypes -

Whales

Koch's Missourium - The king of the seas flees to Europe - Maybe Basilosaurus, maybe not - Huxley's overlooked insight - Fast & furious fossil finds -

Birds and Dinosaurs

Noah's ravens vacation in New England - Hitchcock's Jurassic birds - A little fossil birdie told me about evolution - A misplaced feather - From London to Berlin - The source of Huxley's inspiration - Megalosaurus = an ossified, fossilized, underdeveloped chick - The unimportance of Archaeopteryx - Hypsilophodon as a good transition - Problems with the Pachypoda - How did we get such beautiful fossils? - Ornithosuchus or theropods? - The case of the missing clavicles - 75 years of pseudoscuhian narrative - Barnum Brown's forgotten Daptosaurus - Ostrom's "terrible claw" - "Tetrapteryx" and Microraptor

Human Evolution

Tyson's dissection of a "pigmie" - A chimp's place in the Chain - Where are the "missing links?" - White's 1799 attempt to save the Chain - The Neanderthal that was mistaken for an Irishman - The Neanderthal fossils get named - Dubois goes to Indonesia - Skull of an ape, leg of a human - "Java Man" - The discovery of "Peking Man" - Dart's Australopithecus - An irrelevant ape - Le Gros Clark to the rescue - Osborn vs Bryan - Harold Cook's Mystery Tooth - Hesperopithecus = Prosthenops - What makes us human? - Ask a stupid question... - Ape-like humans, not human-like apes - Caught in the Chain

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If you come by my office sometime before I leave, I'll lend you Willoughby's book "The Evolution of Modern Humans in Africa" which may help with balancing out the human evolution chapter. I think australopithecines are cooler, too, though.