Going All to Species

Big Picture Science

ENCORE Meet your new relatives. The fossilized bones of Homo naledi are unique for their sheer number, but they may also be fill a special slot in our ancestry: the first of our genus Homo. Sporting modern hands and feet but only a tiny brain, this creature may link us and our ape-like ancestors.

Some anthropologists hail the discovery as that of a new hominid species. Not all their colleagues agree. Find out what’s at stake in the debate.

Also, the scientist who helped retrieve the fossils describes her perilous crawl through a cave with only ten inches of elbow room. And a radical theory about what these old bones might mean: could they be from a burial two million years ago?

Guests:

• Marina Elliott – Paleoanthropologist, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
• Carl Ward – Biological anthropologist, University of Missouri
• John Hawks- Anthropologist, University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Tim White - Anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley

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