Robert Eckhardt Pennsylvania State University Cambridge University Press 2000 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface x Acknowledgements xii 1 Paleobiology: present perspectives on the past 1 2 Constancy and change: taxonomic uncertainty in a probabilistic world 17 3 A century of fossils 40 4 About a century of theory 62 5 Human adaptability present and past 90 6 Primate patterns of diversity and adaptation 116 7 Hominid phylogeny: morphological and molecular measures of diversity 142 8 Plio-Pleistocene hominids: the paleobiology of fragmented populations 166 9 Character state velocity in the emergence of more advanced hominids 208 10 The paleobiology of widely dispersed hominids 235 11 Paleobiological perspectives on modern human origins 257 12 A future for the past 280 Bibliography 294 Index 344 FROM THE BACK COVER: Human Paleobiology provides a unifying framework for the study of human populations, both past and present, in a range of changing environments. It integrates evidence from studies of human adaptability, comparative primatology, and molecular genetics to document consistent measures of genetic distance between subspecies, species, and other taxonomic groupings. These findings support the interpretation of the biology of humans in terms of a smaller number of populations characterized by higher levels of genetic continuity than previously hypothesized. Using this as a basis, Robert Eckhardt goes on to analyze problems in human paleobiology including phenotypic differentiation, patterns of species range expansion and phyletic succession in terms of the patterns and processes still observable in extant populations. This book will be a challenging and stimulating read for students and researchers interested in human paleobiology or evolutionary anthropology. ROHERT B. ECKHARDT is Professor of Developmental Genetics and Evolutionary Morphology in the Department of Kinesiology at the Pennsylvania State University. His previous books include The Study of Human Evolution (1979) and Population Studies on Human Adaptation and Evolution in the Peruvian Andes with Terry W. Melton (1992). WHERE TO ORDER: Customer Service Department Cambridge University Press 110 Midland Avenue Port Chester, NY 10573 Phone: 1-800-872-7423 Fax: 914-937-4712 E-mail: orders@cup.org Price: $80 Cloth (ISBN: 0521451604)
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