Along with all manner of European-American immigrants to North America’s Great Plains in the nineteenth century – farmers, miners, gamblers, soldiers, trappers, and many others – came hunters of dinosaur bones. Word had reached some of American archeology’s best-known names that a rich trove of ancient bones lay on Sioux (Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota) land. Paleontologists, including Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899), pioneer of American vertebrate paleontology, may have been illegally trespassing while exploring and collecting fossils on Indian lands. The search was on, and soon academic reputations were being built on fossils taken from Native lands and peoples, often without their consent. These fossil-collecting exploits helped build the foundation for the Peabody Museum of Yale University, and others, as the "golden age" of paleontology unfolded using fossil resources taken from Lakota lands and peoples. Lawrence W. Bradley, who was raised by an Oglala Lakota stepfather, brings this story to life from a Native point of view. This is fascinating reading, told the first time, as he calls for “a new concept of physical geography” that “exposes indigenous paleontology resource dispossession and allows paleontology to conscientiously advance into the twenty-first century.” Bruce E. Johansen Jacob J. Isaacson University Research Professor School of Communication and Native American Studies University of Nebraska at Omaha Johansen is the author of The Encyclopedia of the American Indian Movement (Greenwood, 2013), and other works.

This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers. Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person. The letters are published chronologically: Volume 21 includes letters from 1873, the year in which Darwin received responses to his work on human and animal expression. Also in this year, Darwin continued his work on carnivorous plants and plant movement, finding unexpected similarities between the plant and animal kingdoms, raised a subscription for his friend Thomas Henry Huxley, and decided to employ a scientific secretary for the first time - his son Francis.

Interrogating Human Origins encourages new critical engagements with the study of human origins, broadening the range of approaches to bring in postcolonial theories, and begin to explore the decolonisation of this complex topic. The collection of chapters presented in this volume creates spaces for expansion of critical and unexpected conversations about human origins research. Authors from a variety of disciplines and research backgrounds, many of whom have strayed beyond their usual disciplinary boundaries to offer their unique perspectives, all circle around the big questions of what it means to be and become human. Embracing and encouraging diversity is a recognition of the deep complexities of human existence in the past and the present, and it is vital to critical scholarship on this topic. This book constitutes a starting point for increased interrogation of the important and wide-ranging field of research into human origins. It will be of interest to scholars across multiple disciplines, and particularly to those seeking to understand our ancient past through a more diverse lens.