Lost Anatomies: The Evolution of the Human Form

Product Description Renowned paleoartist John Gurche brings the traditional techniques of figure drawing and anatomical art to the portrayal of our hominin ancestors. The result is a visual record of the evolving human form that feels alive in a way no scientific illustration could match. While science provides an underpinning to Gurche’s art, his work’s primary purpose is to forge an aesthetic connection to the hominins that preceded us on Earth, capturing their humanity. With essays by leading authorities, Lost Anatomies carries the story of human evolution from apes and early hominins; to Australopithecus; to archaic Homo sapiens, including Homo erectus; to derived Homo sapiens, including Neanderthals and other species that are our most recent ancestors. Review "In this captivating collection of drawings and paintings, artist Gurche extrapolates the soft-tissue anatomy of various hominin specimins from their fossils, based on years of examining the relations of bone and tissue in modern apes and humans." -- Scientific American "an exceptional and beautiful collection of palaeoart that occasionally ventures into slightly psychedelic territory, without ever losing sight of the underlying science." -- National History Book Service About the Author John Gurche is one of the world’s best-known artist-anatomists reconstructing early hominids. His work has appeared in the National Museum of Natural History, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Field Museum, as well as National Geographic magazine, Natural History Magazine, and The Scientific American. He lives in Trumansburg, New York. David R. Begun is a paleoanthropologist working on questions of ape and human origins for over thirty-five years. He has directed excavations in Spain and Hungary, discovered some of the most complete fossil apes, and published influential theories of great ape evolution. His research spans the fossil records of Europe, Asia and Africa over a time period from 20 to 7 million years ago. Carol Ward is director of anatomical sciences at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. Rick Potts is a paleoanthropologist and director of the Human Origins Program, based at the U.S. National Museum of Natural History. He is the curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s Hall of Human Origins and author of its companion book What Does It Mean to Be Human? Trenton W. Holliday is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he has been employed since 1998. An expert on Neandertals and modern human origins, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico in 1995 and is author or co-author on over fifty peer-reviewed contributions on human evolution. Meave Leakey is a research professor in paleoanthropology at Stony Brook University and director of field research at the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. She is the fourth member of her distinguished family to win the Hubbard Medal of the National Geographic Society.