Ian Tattersall is Curator Emeritus in the Division of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. With around 400 papers and 30 books published in primatology and evolutionary biology, he has received prizes from organisations ranging from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists to the Accademia Lincei of Rome and the Monuments Conservancy. He has conducted fieldwork in countries as diverse as Madagascar, Yemen, Vietnam and Mauritius.