The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits. The First Human is the story of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and of the intense rivalries that propel them. There is Californian Tim White, French paleontologist Michel Brunet, zoologist Meave Leakey, British geologist Martin Pickford and his partner, Brigitte Senut, a French paleontologist. Through research and first-person reporting, The First Human takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the intense challenges of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.--From publisher description.