A review by balletbookworm
The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor by Colin Tudge

3.0

If you were looking for 250 pages of discussion about Ida, you'll be disappointed. While there is particular attention paid to Ida's discovery and what she means to human evolution a large, central chunk of the books is devoted to explaining the whole of evolutionary history and how paleontologists do their jobs. Interesting, if you had no idea what any of it meant but to a biologist it's pretty boring (two classes on evolutionary biology will do that to you). I would have preferred a more in depth look at Ida herself and how each scientist on Hurum's team used their knowledge and skills to determine her place in the bush that is the human ancestral tree. I also felt the authors (there are two and they overlap in their chapters) could have used the color plates and drawings to better illustrate their ideas. The order and grouping of the plates didn't line up terribly well with the linear narrative the authors were providing in the book.