In This Section:
I. Author Bio
II. Author Letter
I. Author Bio
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Craig Stanford is a professor of anthropology and biological sciences at the University of Southern California, where he also directs the Jane Goodall Research Center. He has conducted field research on primate behavior in south Asia, Latin America, and East Africa. He is well known for his long-term studies of meat-eating among wild chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, and of the relationship between mountain gorillas and chimpanzees in the Impenetrable Forest of Uganda. He has authored or coauthored more than 120 scientific publications. Craig has received USC's highest teaching awards for his introductory biological anthropology course. In addition, he has published eleven books on primate behavior and human origins, including Significant Others (2001), Upright (2003) and Beautiful Minds (2008). He and his wife, Erin Moore, a cultural anthropologist at USC, live in South Pasadena, California, and have three children.
John Allen is a research scientist in the Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center and the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Previously, he was a neuroscience researcher at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, for several years. His primary research interests are the evolution of the human brain and behavior, and behavioral disease. He also has research experience in molecular genetics, nutritional anthropology, and the history of anthropology. He has conducted fieldwork in Japan, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Palau. He has received university awards for teaching introductory courses in biological anthropology both as a graduate student instructor at the University of California and as a faculty member at the University of Auckland. In addition to BiologicalAnthropology, he is also the author of Medical Anthropology: A Biocultural Approach (with Andrea S. Wiley; 2009) and The Lives of the Brain (2009). John and his wife, Stephanie Sheffield, have two sons, Reid and Perry.
Susan Anton is a professor in the Center for the Study of Human Origins, Department of Anthropology at New York University, where she also directs the M.A. program in Human Skeletal Biology. Her field research concerns the evolution of genus Homo in Indonesia and human impact on island ecosystems in the South Pacific. She is best known for her work on H. erectus in Kenya and Indonesia, for which she was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2008. She is past editor of the Journal of Human Evolution. She received awards for teaching as a graduate student instructor of introductory physical anthropology and anatomy at the University of California, was Teacher of the Year while at the University of Florida, and a Golden Dozen teaching award recipient at NYU. She has been twice elected to Who's Who Among America's Teachers. Susan and her husband, Carl Swisher, a geochronologist, raise Anatolian shepherd dogs.
II. Author Letter
Dear Colleague,
It is our pleasure to be able to bring you the third edition of our textbook Biological anthropology: the natural history of
humankind.We are writing to you to share some highlights from the new edition. We have done our best to keep the book comprehensive, cutting edge, and accessibly readable. Over the past three years, new fossil discoveries, new revelations about primate behavior, and new breakthroughs in molecular biology have made an update of our previous edition essential. As always, we have endeavored to provide students and instructors with the very best coverage of these issues, and also the best photographs and images available.
We believe that Biological anthropology offers you an outstanding choice in its comprehensive coverage of topics as well
as its clarity, originality, critical-thinking approach, and presentation of beautifully done artwork and photography. All the traditional topics covered in other introductory biological anthropology texts are covered in detail. We also treat topics that are rarely covered in traditional texts, but are at the cutting edge of field. These include biomedical anthropology, brain evolution, and forager societies.
In addition, new aspects of the third edition include:
* Updated treatment of recent discoveries of Australopithecus sediba, Ardipithecus ramidus, Darwinius, and Denisova hominins,
plus advances in the study of Ancient DNA of Neandertals
* New discoveries about chimpanzee culture, including the latest research on tool use and hunting
* Updates on genetics, including ancient DNA and population genetics
* Expanded treatment of evolutionary aspects of human health and disease
* New photographs of fossils, primates, and other subjects
* New anatomical illustrations, featuring systematic redrawing of fossil and osteological artwork by medical artists
Each chapter of the book now contains an updated visual summary.
We wrote the first edition of Biological anthropology because, as teaching assistants during our graduate school days, we
were disappointed in the overall quality of other books that were available. We are very pleased that Biological anthropology
has become a leader in the biological anthropology textbook market. We are, as always, grateful for feedback from instructors and we try our best to incorporate updates to both the content and appearance of the book with instructor needs in mind. We realize that you, the instructor, have a choice of books to assign and we were committed to producing a new third edition that would meet your needs and those of students in this fascinating field of study.
Sincerely yours,
Craig Stanford
John S. Allen
Susan c. Anton