This authoritative, comprehensive A to Z encyclopedia provides extensive, interdisciplinary coverage of important scientific terms related to improving our understanding of how we evolved. Specifically, the 5,000 entries will cover: evidence and methods used to investigate the relationships among the living great apes, and all the evidence and methods germane to understanding the evolutionary history of the great ape clade evidence about what makes the behavior of modern humans distinctive, and evidence about the evolutionary history of that distinctiveness general evolutionary principles and up-to-date information about the molecular and developmental biological approaches used to help understand the pattern and process of evolution information about the modern methods used to trace the recent evolutionary history of modern human populations fossil and archeological evidence germane to the evolution of the Pan/Homo clade, and the climatic and ecological context of evolution within that clade important sites and taxa, and some of the more important individual specimens.

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution will be an indispensable resource for everyone concerned with the scientific study of the emergence of Homo sapiens.