Ian Tattersall is an internationally-recognized authority on paleoanthropology, primatology, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary theory. Currently an Emeritus Curator in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, he was born in England and raised in East Africa. Ian has written extensively for both academic and popular audiences; his recent books include The Accidental Homo sapiens: Genetics, Behavior, and Free Will (2019, with Rob DeSalle), The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack and Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution (2015), and Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins (2012). He has also written for the AIA’s Archaeology magazine (“Rethinking Human Evolution,” 52:4.22-25) as well as for Scientific American and Natural History magazines. Ian lectures widely at venues around the world and he has curated several major exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, including Madagascar: Island of the Ancestors (1989) and two permanent exhibits: the Hall of Human Biology and Evolution (1993) and the Spitzer Hall of Human Origins (2007). He has long been a popular lecturer on study tours, including four previous AIA Tours exploring human origins in southern Africa, prehistoric cave art in Spain and France, and Madagascar and Mozambique.
