See How Scientists Identified Our New Human Ancestor

Location: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

LEE BERGER, PALEOANTHROPOLOGIST AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER-IN-RESIDENCE:
We now know what we got. We’ve got a new member of the genus Homo, a species that we’re going to call Homo naledi.

It’s Day 29 of a 30-day workshop that is entirely designed to describe and study the first generation of papers on the material from the Rising Star which I brought together around 40 to 45 people at any one time with about 30 to 32 early-career scientists. They brought an entirely unique skillset as well as differences in opinion from different backgrounds and training so that we were sure that we were looking at these fossils to see whether we could efficiently go through this material in a way no one has ever done before.

SCIENTIST ON-CAMERA: So this is the most complete piece of the pelvis that we have. There’s not a whole lot there but there are actually some very important morphologies preserved on this piece.

WILLIAM HARCOURT-SMITH, LEHMAN COLLEGE-CUNY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES: All these bones were found together. They all come from the same individual. They all come from the same side. But we don’t obviously want to glue the original so we’re doing it with 3D print out.

Anyone who walked into that room would feel the intellectual and scientific buzz that was happening. You can actually feel the room vibrating with it. It is an amazing experience. I’ve learned tons.

SCOTT WILLIAMS, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES:
So, the axial skeleton really took a beating, uh, in preservation so we got lots of little pieces . So, in overall size if we take a look at our vertebrae, it’s very, very tiny. If we compare it to the smallest known australopithecus vertebrae of a similar level—that belonging to Lucy from Australopithecus afarensis—you can see that our vertebrae is actually a fair amount smaller than that of Lucy.

LAUREN SCHROEDER, UNIVERSITY OF CAPETOWN, CAPETOWN, SOUTH AFRICA:
In terms of the cranial team, I didn’t know anyone. And we all, six ladies [laughs] all early-career scientists, just got together and we just started working. Two of us went off and did the metrics stuff. Two of us went off and did non-metrics. And the other two did the writing. So, it worked really, really, really well.

DAVORKA RADOVCIC, NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF CROATIA, ZAGREB, CROATIA :
Every piece of body has kind of, like, its own story. And now you have to combine all of it and come to a kind of solution for the whole sample.

TRENTON HOLLIDAY, TULANE UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, UNITED STATES:
We work in a very contentious field, so I had some fears that there might be some things that were controversial that people wouldn’t want to say, that you’re going to have infighting among the various groups. But it hasn’t been that way at all. I would say it has been a very positive experience.

LAUREN SCHROEDER, UNIVERSITY OF CAPETOWN, CAPETOWN, SOUTH AFRICA:
Just the sheer magnitude of material is awesome. And, yeah, it’s good to be South African and be associated with the South African material.

WORKSHOP TEAM MEMBER 1 ON-CAMERA: The teeth in the maxilla are offset posteriorly.

WORKSHOP TEAM MEMBER2 ON-CAMERA: Right.

WORKSHOP TEAM MEMBER 1 ON-CAMERA: So the maxillary M3 can’t touch the mandibular M2.

WORKSHOP TEAM MEMBER 2 ON-CAMERA: Right.

All these different experts are able to bounce questions in a moment off of each other. Cross-pollination. Scientific ideas. You make less mistakes that way.

I’ll be you that we spent more in this month in person hours working on this material than most teams spend in years and years and years working on their material. I learned that the people who go into paleoanthropology and study it doing for love and passion. When you let them loose on these fossils, they create extraordinary things because they are passionate about it.