Ian Tattersall

Ian Tattersall ( born October 5, 1945 in England) is a living in the U.S. primatologist and paleoanthropologist. From 1971 to 2010 he was head of the Anthropology department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. His research interests include in particular the evolutionary history of humans and the systematics and ecology of lemurs of Madagascar.

Ian Tattsall grew up in East Africa. He studied at the University of Cambridge, the subjects archeology and anthropology to the master's degree (1970 ) and then at Yale University, the subjects geology and vertebrate paleontology. In 1971 he earned his doctorate at Yale degree. 1971/72 he was employed as a lecturer at the New School for Social Research, and until 1974 at the City University of New York, each in field anthropology. This was followed by a teaching professor at Columbia University and at the same time at the City University of New York. Field studies he conducted in Madagascar and the Comoros, Mauritius and Borneo, as well as in Nigeria, Niger, Sudan, Yemen, Vietnam, Surinam, French Guiana, Réunion and the United States.

His main research work is on the one hand the book published in 1982 The Primates of Madagascar, on the other hand, the four volumes of The Human Fossil Record. He is also co-author of the first description of scientific Gabelstreifenmakis Northern, the Western and the Gabelstreifenmakis Sambirano Gabelstreifenmakis and namesake of the taxon " Palaeopropithecinae ". From Tattersall also comes the first scientific evidence of the Goldkronensifaka ( Propithecus tattersalli ), which was created in 1988 described as a distinct species and named after him.

A stir about his special sciences also made ​​Tattersall in 1993 when he released the remains of four Eskimos in Greenland to the funeral, which had been stockpiled in the anthropological collection of the American Museum of Natural History. 1896 Anthropologists had four Greenlanders deported to the U.S. to question them, to investigate and measure; in the United States were the four died after a short period of tuberculosis.

Ian Tattersall is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the American Society of primatologists, the International Primate Society, Sigma Xi, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the Linnean Society of London.

• The Primates of Madagascar. Columbia University Press, New York 1982, ISBN 978-0231047043
• The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0195367669 German edition: Puzzle Incarnation. On the trail of human evolution. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg, inter alia, 1997, ISBN 3-8274-0140-2

• German edition: Neanderthal. The dispute over our ancestors. Birkhäuser, Basel 1999, ISBN 3-7643-6051-8