Ian Tattersall

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Ian Tattersall, 2012

Ian Tattersall (born October 5, 1945 in England ) is a primatologist and paleoanthropologist living in the USA . From 1971 to 2010 he was director of the anthropological department of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City . His research areas include in particular the human tribal history and the systematics and ecology of the lemurs of Madagascar .

Ian Tattersall grew up in East Africa. He studied at the University of Cambridge , the subjects archeology and anthropology to the master's degree (1970) and then at Yale University , the subjects Geology and Paleontology of vertebrates . In 1971 he received his PhD from Yale. In 1971/72 he was a lecturer at the New School for Social Research and until 1974 at the City University of New York , each in the field of anthropology. This was followed by teaching as a professor at Columbia University and at the same time at the City University of New York. He conducted field studies in Madagascar and the Comoros , Mauritius and Borneo as well as Nigeria , Niger , Sudan , Yemen , Vietnam , Suriname , French Guiana , Réunion and the USA.

His main scientific work is on the one hand the book The Primates of Madagascar , published in 1982, and on the other hand the four volumes on The Human Fossil Record . He is also the co-author of the first scientific description of the northern forked lemur , the western forked lemur and the Sambirano forked lemur and namesake of the taxons " Palaeopropithecinae ". Tattersall also the first scientific evidence of the native golden-crowned sifaka (Propithecus tattersalli) , which was described in 1988 as a separate species and named after him.

Tattersall caused a stir in 1993 when he released the bones of four Eskimos for burial in Greenland, which had been stored in the anthropological collection of the American Museum of Natural History. In 1896 anthropologists had brought four Greenlanders to the USA in order to interview, examine and measure them; in the USA the four died of tuberculosis after a short time.

Ian Tattersall is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the American Association of Physical Anthropologists , the American Society of Primatologists, the International Primate Society, von Sigma Xi , the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and the Linnean Society of London.

Fonts (selection)

Books

  • The Primates of Madagascar. Columbia University Press, New York 1982, ISBN 0-231-04704-5 .
  • The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 0-19-536766-9 .
    • German edition: Puzzle Incarnation. On the trail of human evolution. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8274-0140-2 .
  • The Last Neanderthal: The Rise, Success, and Mysterious Extinction of Our Closest Human Relative. Macmillan, New York 1995. (Revised version: Westview Press / Basic Books, 1999, ISBN 0-8133-3675-9 )
    • German edition: Neanderthals. The dispute about our ancestors. Birkhäuser, Basel 1999, ISBN 3-7643-6051-8 .
  • with Eric Delson , John Van Couvering and Alison S. Brooks (Eds.): Encyclopedia of human evolution and prehistory. 2nd Edition. Routledge, Oxford / New York 1999, ISBN 0-8153-1696-8 .
  • Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / Mariner Books, 1999, ISBN 0-15-600653-7 .
  • with Jeffrey H. Schwartz : Extinct Humans . Westview Press / Basic Books, Boulder (Colorado) 2000, ISBN 0-8133-3482-9 .
  • The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / Mariner Books, 2003, ISBN 0-15-602706-2 .
  • with Jeffrey H. Schwartz and others: The Human Fossil Record. Wiley-Liss, Volume 1: Terminology and Craniodental Morphology of Genus Homo. 2002, ISBN 0-471-31927-9 ; Volume 2: Craniodental Morphology of Genus Homo [Africa and Asia]. 2003, ISBN 0-471-31928-7 ; Volume 3: Brain Endocasts - The Paleoneurological Evidence. 2004, ISBN 0-471-41823-4 ; Volume 4: Craniodental Morphology of Early Hominids. Genera Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Orrorin, and Overview. 2005, ISBN 0-471-31929-5 .
  • with Winfried Henke (Ed.): Handbook of Paleoanthropology. 3 volumes. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg and New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-540-32474-4 .
  • The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE. Oxford University Press. New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-533315-2 .
  • with Rob DeSalle: Human Origins: What Bones and Genomes Tell Us about Ourselves. TAMU Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-58544-567-7 .
  • Paleontology: A Brief History of Life. Templeton Press: Templeton Science and Religion Series, West Conshohocken (Pennsylvania, USA) 2010, ISBN 978-1-59947-342-0 .
  • Masters of the Planet. The Search for Our Human Origins. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, ISBN 978-0-230-10875-2 .
  • The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack - and Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2015, ISBN 978-1-137-27889-0 .
  • with Rob DeSalle: Troublesome Science: The Misuse of Genetics and Genomics in Understanding Race. Columbia University Press, New York 2018, ISBN 978-0-231-18572-1 .

Technical article

  • The material record and the antiquity of language. In: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. Volume 81, Part B, 2017, pp. 247-254, doi: 10.1016 / j.neubiorev.2017.01.043
  • How can we detect when language emerged? In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Volume 24, No. 1, 2017, pp. 64-67, doi: 10.3758 / s13423-016-1075-9
  • If I had a hammer. In: Scientific American. Volume 311, No. 3, 2014, pp. 54–59, doi: 10.1038 / scientificamerican0914-54 , full text (PDF)
  • with Jeffrey H. Schwartz: Hominids and hybrids: The place of Neanderthals in human evolution. In: PNAS . Volume 96, No. 13, 1999, pp. 7117-7119, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.96.13.7117
  • Species concepts and species identification in human evolution. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 22, No. 4-5, 1992, pp. 341-349, doi: 10.1016 / 0047-2484 (92) 90064-G
  • Species recognition in human paleontology. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 15, No. 3, 1986, pp. 165-175, doi: 10.1016 / S0047-2484 (86) 80043-4 , (full text)
  • with Niles Eldredge : Fact, theory and fantasy in human paleontology. In: Americal Scientist. Vol. 65, No. 2, 1977, pp. 204-211.
  • with Niles Eldredge: Evolutionary models, phylogenetic reconstruction, and another look at hominid phylogeny. In: Frederick S. Szalay (Ed.): Approaches to Primate Paleobiology. (= Contributions to Primatology. Volume 5). Karger, Basel 1975, pp. 218-242.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ian Tattersall, Bones in the Drawer. In: Der Spiegel . No. 35/1993, August 30, 1993.
personal data
SURNAME Tattersall, Ian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British paleoanthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH England