- Welcome everyone to
We

dnesday Nite @ the Lab.

I'm Tom Zinnen.

I work here at the UW-Madison
Biotechnology Center.

I also work for UW-Extension,
Cooperative Extension,

and on behalf of those folks
and our other co-organizers,

the Wisconsin
Alumni Association,

Wisconsin Public Television

and the UW-Madison
Science Alliance,

thanks again for coming to
We

dnesday Nite @ the Lab.

We do this every Wednesday
night, 50 times a year.

Back on September
10th of last year,

I had the pleasure of
going to give a talk

at the biotechnology class at
the Verona Area High School.

It had happened that the
news of the discovery

of a new hominin, Homo naledi,
had broken just that morning.

The UW had played key
roles in characterizing

and describing this new species,

so I asked the
students at Verona

about their take on that story.

They're only about 12 miles
from this rather remarkable

public land grant
research university.

I wanted to get an idea

of what they had
gleaned from the media.

There was one girl in the
class, she was a little shy,

but she sure seemed to
know a lot about that work.

And I asked her how she
knew so much about it.

And she said, "Well,
John Hawks is my dad."

(audience laughs)

And she was pretty
proud about that.

It's a great delight to get
to welcome back John Hawks.

This is at least the
third time he's been here.

He is the Vilas-Borghesi

Distinguished Achievement
Professor of Anthropology.

And we get to hear tonight

about one of his
finest achievements.

It's a story that has already
become a point of pride

for the University
of Wisconsin-Madison.

But Professor Hawks has an
even more splendid achievement:

he has made his daughter
proud of her dad.

(audience laughs)

Please join me in
welcoming John Hawks

back to
We

dnesday Nite @ the Lab.

(applause)

- Wow!

Thank you everybody
for coming out tonight.

I see some familiar
faces out there.

I see a lot of faces
I haven't seen before.

I'm so pleased that all of
you have come in to hear

about this work that we're
doing here at the university

and in collaboration with our
colleagues in South Africa.

It's really exciting stuff.

And this is just the first
phase of the research.

Tom told you about
my daughter Sophie.

She is the only, to my
knowledge, high school girl

who's actually helped to pack
materials for Homo naledi

in the vault in South
Africa where they are.

So, you know, she had a ringside
seat during the workshop

when we were
describing this stuff.

I'll say a couple
of words about it

and how we came to involve

so many people in
this description.

But it has been
really special for me

to be a part of it from
the very beginning.

It's been an enormous privilege

to be working on this project
at the Rising Star Cave

because our work with
National Geographic,

which comes through our
project director, Lee Berger,

he's a National Geographic
explorer in residence,

has enabled us to have
a lot of media resources

on site from the very beginning.

And actually my project here
at the University of Wisconsin,

developing the massive
open online course,

we delivered that two
years ago now this spring

to 40,000 people
around the world.

And that was being organized

at the time that
this project began.

So we actually had a lot of

University of Wisconsin
video resources on hand.

So we have a unique
documentation

of the project actually from
the very point of discovery.

And that's a great
privilege for me

because I have the resources
to be able to show you

some of these things
in people's own words,

so that you can
see what's going on

at the site as we're excavating.

And the first thing I'd
like to show is a word

from one of the cavers
who was responsible

for the initial discovery
of the bones in the cave.

He gives you a
first-hand account

of how they came to
discover these bones.

- Caving has always been great.

Caving, you want to
answer the question

of what's around
the next corner.

That's always the
question you want to know.

It's mostly fueled by curiosity.

But as you get into
caving more and more,

the scientific side
of it comes into it.

You want to know, how
did these places form?

What happened here
millions of years ago?

What happened here
billions of years ago?

Basically, it
creates a fascination

with this whole environment.

In my wildest dreams I
would never have thought

that caving would take me to
what's happening here. (laughs)

You could almost call
this a bit of an accident.

So, my caving
buddy and me, Rick,

we were off exploring this
cave on a Friday night.

We'd gone into a very
remote section of the cave,

a part that I had
never been in before.

And in that section, we
stumbled upon fossils.

(laughs)

Yeah, at first, we didn't
exactly know what fossils yet.

We started looking
around a bit more

until we found a mandible.

And that's when we knew
this was probably hominid.

That was when we got
excited about it. (laughs)

And since this discovery,

it's (laughs) crazy
what's happening here.

Pedro Boshoff is a geologist.

He's been caving in this
country for 50-plus years.

And he was asked by
Lee to basically go
and look for fossils

in deep sort of areas of caves.

And he'd then spoken to myself

and Rick and a few
others and said

he needs us to come start
looking for hominids. (laughs)

And on this whole expedition,

he has been in
charge of the cavers,

coordinating who is here
and what we have to do

and getting everything
organized for us.

And since the start
of this expedition,

from the cavers' side
we've been putting in

over two kilometers of cabling.

Those are for
cameras and lights,

communications within the cave.

And we've also put
up safety ropes

straight throughout the cave,

for the safety of
the scientists,

making sure there's no injuries.

And we're here for backup.

In case something does go wrong,

we are here to assist
as soon as possible.

- This is Lee Berger, who's
the director of the project.

These guys were interested
in working with Lee

potentially because Lee
had been responsible

for the discovery of a fossil
named Australopithecus sediba.

That discovery
happened in 2008-2009

and those results
have been published

over the last six years.

They got a lot of
attention as creating

a new process of discovery

where people were
exploring new caves.

And Lee had gone over the ground

across the entire
world heritage site,

it's called The Cradle of
Humankind World Heritage Site,

mapping caves that hadn't
been previously mapped.

So these guys who
work underground,

it's their hobby to go
into caves on the weekends

and try to push the boundaries,

go into parts of caves
where they didn't know

that anybody had
ever been before.

And they said, "Sometimes we
see bones when we do this.

"Maybe we can work with you

"and we might find
something too."

And of course Lee said,
"That's wonderful!"

I've talked to him
about it many times.

He did not expect
that the first cave

that they went into we would
make a massive discovery.

And yet it was his philosophy

that when you're going to
start something systematically,

you go into your backyard first.

Go to the places that you know.

And the Rising Star Cave, which
is underneath this hillside,

which is pretty nondescript,

this hillside is basically
a chert dolomite hillside,

and inside of it are
more than a kilometer

of underground passageways

that make up the Rising
Star Cave system.

This is a small part
of the system map

that shows you the area that
we're actually working in,

from our entrance to the chamber

where we found the
massive fossil deposit.

In this kilometer of
underground passageways,

are lots of twisty-turny routes.

And you get into
them really quickly

after you go into the cave.

How many of you folks
have been in a cave?

How many of you
have been in a cave?

Been in a cave, yeah.
Okay, brilliant.

How many of you
have been in a cave

where you have to crawl on
your hands and knees somewhere?

Okay.

And how many of you have
actually had to squeeze

so that rock was against
your front and back?

Yeah.

This, if you haven't done it,

can be a really
terrifying experience.

If you're claustrophobic at all,

this is a real
problem situation.

But this is the situation that
the Rising Star Cave poses.

And it's why our cavers like it.

Because you can get
into those kinds of

really hairy places
right after the entrance.

So, you don't have to spend
all day caving underground

to get somewhere
really interesting.

And it's a great
place to bring people

to train them on
that kind of caving.

So, people were really
familiar with this cave,

and it's been known in
the caving community

for more than 50 years.

It lies less than
a mile-and-a-half

from at least six very
famous fossil sites,

including two that have been
investigated systematically

for more than 70 years
for hominin fossils.

So, it's in a very
fossil-rich environ.

But fossils had never been
noticed in this cave before.

The reason why probably is that
these really narrow passages

and twists and turns make it

really hard to
access these bones.

So, when you saw these guys
sort of squeezing through

that super narrow place,

the way that we reach
the Dinaledi chamber,

where we are now
excavating fossil hominins,

is by going down
a vertical drop.

You can see it there on
the edge of the graph.

The Dinaledi chamber is
on the far right side.

And there's this
vertical little drop

that is about a
12-meter vertical decent

that has a minimum width in it

of about seven-and-a-half
inches, 18 centimeters.

So in order to get down that,

you have to have the
climbing ability to do it.

And Steve, who you saw
talking there in the video,

when he initially found
this, the reason why

is that he had climbed
up this dragons back,

which is this ridge of rock-fall

that has come down
in the distant past.

And so you have to climb it,
and you get up to the top of it

and there this little narrow
sort of, I don't know,

entryway that you can
sort of hang out in.

And he had wedged himself
down in this crack to rest,

and he noticed that he
didn't touch the bottom.

And so he did exactly
what your or I

would have done in
the same situation.

(audience laughs)

He said, "I wonder
what's down there?"

(cables swooshing)

And he went down 12 meters,

and Rick followed him.

So, that was how the
discovery was made.

This was not an
obvious place to look.

It was very difficult to reach.

And that created immediately
a problem for our team.

How are we gonna
excavate in this place?

Once they had brought
the photos out,

and they knocked on
Lee's door late at night.

And they said, "You're
going to want to let us in."

And he looked at the photos.
He's like, "This is a hominin."

And he sent me the photos.

He sent it to a number
of our senior colleagues

who've been involved
in the project before.

He said, "What do
you think of these?"

It's a fossil hominin.
There it is.

It's a jaw bone laying
on the floor of a chamber

that clearly is
a fossil hominin.

Not a human, but
some earlier form,

and all the bones that you
saw there to go with it.

So, it was clear that we
had to mobilize immediately.

Well, Lee did
exactly what you or I

would have done in
the same situation.

He put a call on Facebook.

(audience laughs)

"Dear colleagues: I need the
help of the whole community

"and for you to
reach out to as many

"related professional
groups as possible.

"We need perhaps three
or four individuals

"with excellent
archaeological, paleontological

"and excavation skills
for a short term project

"that may last the
month of November

"if things go as planned.

"The catch is this: the
person must be skinny

"and preferably small.

"They must not be
claustrophobic.

"They must be fit, they should
have some caving experience,

"climbing experience
would be a bonus."

Within a few days Lee had
received 57 applications

from qualified people
all around the world.

And on a basis of
looking at their records,

interviewing them over Skype,

he selected six
outstanding young women

to be the caving team that
would be the people responsible

for excavating in this
very challenging place.

And so, here's our team.

And I'd like to point out

second from the left
there is Alia Gurtov,

who's a University of
Wisconsin graduate student,

part of our
anthropology program.

On the far left
is Becca Peixotto,

who is involved in Outward Bound

and a master's
student in archeology,

now a doctoral student
at American University.

Elen Feuerriegel is from
Australia National University.

Marina Elliott, in
the right center,

is now directing
field exploration

in the Cradle for the project.

She was at Simon Fraser
University in Canada.

Lindsay Eaves.

And Hannah Morris, now at
the University of Georgia.

So our caving underground
team, outstanding young women.

And over the course of less
than three weeks underground,

they excavated what would be

the largest single
fossil excavation

ever conducted in Africa
for hominin fossils.

So, I'll show you some scenes
of the underground work,

it's a challenging situation.

Everything that you see us
working with underground

had to be taken through
those narrow passages.

And that means the
power, the lights,

the computers, the
scanners that we use.

You see them working
there in very closed off,

sort of contorting
sort of circumstances.

It became really rapidly clear

after very little excavation.

This is me in the cave, right.

And I put this up
here to remind myself

to tell you guys how
worthless I actually am.

(audience laughs)

I don't fit.

I will never set foot in the
place where these fossils are.

Lee will never set
foot in that place.

This is a very special chamber
that you can only access

with the right climbing
and caving skills

and the right physical makeup.

And most people don't have it.

It has been a great
privilege to be involved

in the project in
the way that I have.

And I like to tell
people, especially kids,

the cool thing about this
is, I'm never gonna be there.

And the only way that I know
what I do about this place,

and I know as much
about this place

as anyone else in
the world right now,

the only way that I
know anything about it

is by doing science on it.

And that's pretty cool.

We, throughout the project,

compared what we were doing
underground to astronauts.

Because it is sort of like,
I mean, they're not in space.

But it's sort of
like a spacewalk.

Because when they're
working in there,

we cannot get to them.

It took a half an hour for our
team to get from the surface

into the chamber to
be ready to work,

and a half an hour for
anything to come back out.

So they're really quite remote.

And my view from up
here on the surface,

from the tents above ground

is entirely virtual.

So here's Lee looking at one
of our virtual viewpoints.

We have cameras underground.

And basically this is our view.

We're watching the
excavation in progress.

And we can help to
understand what's going on.

We can give some expert
guidance about what to do.

But honestly, it's
up to our team

to do the best work that
they can underground,

under some very
challenging circumstances.

So, I mean, there is
something mesmerizing

about watching
this happen, right?

Because you see
her working there

with a little plastic spoon.

Hannah's working in the
background with a little brush.

This is standard
archeological equipment.

And what a lot of people
are surprised about

with the Rising Star assemblage,

is that unlike many fossil
sites in southern Africa,

our fossils are not
embedded in a hard rock.

Most fossil sites
that we work with,

the bones are imbedded in a
rock that we call breccia,

which is made up
of bone, gravel,

stuff from outside the
cave that's fallen in

and glued together with calcite,
so that it's a hard cement.

Our bone is in a soft sediment

that's basically like a
very fine-grained clay.

And to work in it we just
have to brush it away.

The challenge is that our
bones are incredible fragile.

And I'll say some more
words about that later.

These bones are not
hardened into rock.

They are incredibly fragile.

And so we come to challenges.

Now, when we looked at the
photographs from the cave,

all of us pored over
those photographs

before we started excavation.

And we said,

"You know, I don't see
anything here that's repeated.

"This looks like it's gonna
be one hominin skeleton.

"I don't see any
parts doubled here."

And that would be an
amazing discovery, right?

Because when you think about
the most famous discoveries

in my field that have ever
been made, things like Lucy,

Lucy is a skeleton that's
about 40% complete,

and that is one of the most
important single pieces

of evidence of our
evolutionary history.

We expected that
we were gonna find

something about that scale.

And, of course, that was gonna
be tremendously important.

We would have probably
for the first time

a skeleton associated
from an individual

of a South African species

that we probably
already knew about.

Something like
Australopithecus robustus,

which is found only
a half-mile away,

at the site of Swartkrans.

So, this seemed very likely.

It was gonna tell us something
that we already knew,

but in much better detail

and would give us
a first ever look

at the whole anatomy
of something.

And that was gonna
be really exciting.

That feeling lasted
until the first day

that we sent our
team into the cave.

Our first day, we got
everything arranged.

We set up everything do
to a run into the cave

to make sure that
the equipment worked,

to bring out one bone.

We targeted that
jawbone and we said,

"Okay, let's make this happen."

The jawbone came
out and all of us

who were on the senior
part of the team,

who knew the anatomy of
all these fossil hominins

like our own children,
I've got to tell you,

looked at the
jawbone and we said,

"That's not what
I thought it was."

(audience laughs)

The next day our team
went to work seriously

bringing bone out of the
surface of the chamber

and brought up three pieces
of right thigh bones,

all of different
right thigh bones.

It was suddenly
clear, immediately,

that we were looking
at multiple skeletons.

This was not the kind of
site we thought it was.

Suddenly, this was
vastly more important

than we suspected it was.

And so to give you an idea
of what that was like--

- Today we're working
on extracting a skull.

- I'll show you a day at work.

- It's looking to be fairly
difficult at the moment

because the skull
is very pliable.

It's very, very soft, 'cause
it's quite damp down there.

It's adding to the problem.

So, I think, at the moment,
our current strategy

is to try and remove the
skull in one giant block.

As much as we can, anyway,

because there's a lot
of underlying bones.

We've got two people working on
different sides of the skull.

So, I think you've got more eyes

on what the actual
skull is doing

as we're trying to excavate it.

- We are very hopeful that they
can get it out in one piece.

There's a good chance
that they will.

But if they cannot,
at least we'll have it

very carefully exposed
and we'll be able

to very carefully
draw and indicate

where exactly each
piece came from.

And then we'll deal with
it in the science end.

We can watch their
work very carefully,

and that's been very helpful

for us to understand what
they're seeing down there.

The coolest thing is that
I can't get down there,

but it is as close
as anyone can get

to being there to help them.

(machinery rumbling)

- [Voiceover] Hi!

- It's early evening,
late, late afternoon.

It's time for
fossils to come up.

- Well, they're supposedly
bringing it out right now.

- If it's lying on its
side--(sound obscured by wind).

It'd be really nice.

- It feels completely surreal.

This just doesn't happen.

They're coming to begin up.

So, if somebody wants to
do this, now is the moment.

- [Voiceover] It's
a big moment again!

Every time it's a big moment.

- Is that it?

All right.

- Look at that.

Here it comes.

- [Voiceover] There it is.

- Let's go get it.

(people laughing)

- We got the large section
of the cranium out.

Glad to be done with that part.

There's a lot more down there.

There's a whole
puzzle of long bones,

and other bones, down,
underneath where that was.

About halfway through the time

Marina and I were down
there, it was pretty clear

that we weren't gonna
leave 'til it came out.

There was no way
we were stopping.

The science tent
closed a while ago,

and they have something to
keep 'em busy in the morning.

So, that's good.
(laughs)

- We began digging at that
spot because of that skull.

We cleared the surface
of the chamber.

There were bones scattered
on the surface as you saw.

We were collecting
those from the surface.

But there was this skull
protruding from the dirt.

And so we began working
on that to extract it.

As our team began
working around it,

they discovered that the skull

is actually sitting upon bones.

And those bones are laid
like pick-up sticks,

one on top of the other, as
far down as we could sense.

And so this became a
massive undertaking,

just working to
get that skull out.

And once it was out, working
on and gradually exposing

more and more of
this layer of bone

that was making up the chamber.

Every bone that we were finding,

there was a bone of
a fossil hominin.

And they were in exceptional
completeness in many cases.

So suddenly this
was an undertaking

that we were working literally,

probably centimeters a day,

just clearing outward
and making sure

that we were very carefully
exposing the bones,

and then safely
bringing them out.

Everything that came out of
the cave had to be marked,

catalogued on the
site, photographed,

put into secure watertight bags,

put into a waterproof
padded caving bag

and had to come out
that narrow passageway.

So, it was enormously
stressful, let's say,

that we had to do all
of this to make sure

that everything came out safely.

But it was also
enormously elating

every time something would
come out of the cave.

Because every time we
opened up one of these

there was the
possibility, and most,

I mean, more than half the time,

it was something that
nobody had ever seen before.

So, including bones that
we almost never find

at fossil sites, you know?

So, I'll show you some
of these bones in a bit.

It is really quite a
remarkable achievement.

But as a result, that
situation of the fossils

posed some very
special challenges.

For one thing, we
worked for 21 days

in this site, excavating
an area that is smaller

than the area of this table.

Less than a square
meter, and to a depth

of less than a fourth
of a square meter

throughout most of it,

less that a fourth of
a meter, excuse me.

So less than a foot deep,
across less than a square yard.

This is an amazing assemblage
to come out of that space.

Most of the bone assemblage
in the cave is still there.

We have excavated only a
very tiny fraction of it.

Also, the unique
situation of the cave,

the cramped situation,

the inability to get
straight sight lines

and the dense
packing of the bone,

meant that we needed to study

the spatial arrangement of this

in a different way
than we usually do.

Usually, we can set
up surveying equipment

and very precisely get
in the points of things

by setting up a station.

In our case, we
couldn't do that.

We needed to use a
different approach.

And the approach that we
used was a scanning approach.

Here you'll see the results
of some of our first scans.

We have a scanner that
we can take the surface

of the excavation
at every point.

And, in fact, after
every bone removal,

we take the surface
of the excavation

so that we have layer by layer,

everything that we've
done in the site

can be reconstructed just
back the way that we made it.

So, it is really
pushing the technology

to enable us to reconstruct the
arrangement of these things.

We're already learning things
about the spatial arrangement

that we wouldn't have
recovered otherwise.

One of the other things that
we were doing on the site

was we had our underground team.

We had a team of
more than 20 cavers

that were involved
in the excavation,

running cabling, as you
saw, keeping things safe.

We had cavers in the
cave at all times

to make sure we could get
things out of the cave,

and to get people out
if it was necessary.

All of these folks were
camping above ground.

And we needed to, A,
allow people to recognize

the importance of
what they were doing.

So that if they were taking
time away from their families,

from their jobs, they
could tell people,

"Hey, check this out."

So, part of the
really great thing

about our social media presence,

tweeting from the site,
doing Facebook posts,

getting National
Geographic video

on YouTube from the site,

and here our team Skyping
out to schools from the site,

we were Skyping to schools and
countries all over the world,

was that it enabled people
to really get the sense

of something really
important that's happening.

And it enabled us to
share as much as possible

the process of this
with the public.

So while there were aspects
of it that we couldn't,

we couldn't say
because we didn't know.

We hadn't studied the
bones yet scientifically.

We could still tell people
what the process was.

"Here's what we're doing.
Here's what we're finding.

"Yeah, we found another thigh
bone out of the cave today.

"We found another mandible.

"And here's how we're doing it.

"Here's how we'll
study these things.

"Here's what we
don't know about it."

That turned out to be
a massive resource.

We reached out, in one of
our videos within 36 hours,

it was seen by more than
300,000 people around the world.

So, this was really something

that people were
following everywhere.

The packing up on the site,

it was clear that with
this assemblage of fossils,

at the end of November
more than 1,200 fossils.

After another week of
excavation in March,

which we came back to
do some targeted work

to bring out a couple of things

that we knew were at
the bottom of this pit,

but we hadn't been able
to get out safely before,

we recovered another
300 bone pieces.

So, we had in all more
than 1,500 pieces of bone.

We needed a very special
way to study that.

That by itself is the
largest assemblage

of fossil hominins ever
discovered in Africa.

There's only one
site in the world

that comes close to this,
in terms of fossils.

It's in Spain and it's an early
form of our own genus, homo.

So, what we did

was to get the word
out, again via Facebook,

again via social networks.

We need people to come and help
us to analyze this material.

If we just took the
team of senior people

who've been involved in the
project for many years to come

and describe stuff,
it would take us

years and years
and years to do it.

We didn't want to
do it that way.

But we also wanted to take
advantage of the opportunity

to broaden the
involvement of this

to a new generation of people.

So, we got the word out that
we were looking for scientists

who were in their early career.

People who were
finishing their Ph.D.,

who had already
done their research,

who already had data sets,

or who had recently
finished their Ph.D.

They're in their first
position, a post-doc,

an assistant professorship,
and you've got data sets,

"Please apply.
"Tell us what you've got."

And we have resources
to bring people

to work on the fossils.

And that's exactly what we did.

During June of 2014,
May and June of 2014,

we assembled more than 35

early-career researchers
in South Africa,

funded by the South African
National Research Foundation

to do the primary description
and analysis of the fossils.

This was an amazing time,

I think for all of
them, certainly for me.

Because, imagine, right?

You've got people
who've been dreaming

about doing this sort of thing

for at least what has been
in their careers to date.

And I'll never forget,
taking the big,

these things are in a vault
like a bank vault, right?

With a giant door,
and taking the big key

and opening the vault and
doing the (door opening)

and letting these folks
into the fossil vault

for the first time and
seeing these fossils.

It was really quite amazing.

And on site here for
more than five weeks,

we put more than
10,000 person hours

into the analysis
of these fossils.

We measured them in
every way possible.

We scanned them.
We made surface models of them.

We described them in relation
to every fossil hominin

that we had to compare them to.

And that included
not only originals

that exist in South Africa,
but high quality copies

of things that we assembled
by getting everybody

around the world who
had copies of things

to send them to us so that
we could compare them.

So we really put together
a scientific document

that shows the
anatomy of something

that would turn out to
be, after our analysis,

a species that had been
totally unknown to us before.

A new species that
we named Homo naledi.

Naledi in the Sesotho language,

which is one of
the local languages

spoken in this area, means star.

And we named it star because
of the Rising Star Cave

that we found them in.

And we named the chamber
where we found the bones,

the chamber that had
not been on the map

before our team went into it,

we named that chamber
the Dinaledi Chamber,

which means the
chamber of stars.

So Homo naledi turned out to be

similar in some ways
to early members

of our own genus, genus homo.

But also substantially
different from them

in some really interesting ways.

It gave us a picture of a
species that we didn't expect.

This is a virtual
model made from

some of the scans of the bones,

some of the 3-D scans.

So this is a 3-D
manipulatable model.

Here's is the bone layout,

that shows you the
multiple pieces

of each part that
we have preserved.

For the first time, we were
able to prepare a description

of a new species of hominin
based on the entire skeleton.

Usually we find a jaw.
And we compare that jaw.

We pour over it, comparing it
to everything we know about.

And we find a few details
that make it different,

and we say, "Ah, This
is something new!"

In this case, we're able to
compare the entire skeleton.

And some things really are
unique, we've never seen before.

And some things overlap
with other species.

But what was key about
this was that the things

that overlap with one species,

other features would
overlap with something else.

This was a new
combination of things

that we'd never seen before.

So the skull is the
most charismatic part.

Everybody loves the skull.

We have parts of at
least five skulls,

and very probably more.

When I say at least
five, what I mean is that

I can show by laying them out

that I have the same
part repeated five times.

So, we have parts of
at least five skulls.

We have parts of at least
15 individuals' dentitions.

I'll show you teeth in a bit.

Here's our team
working on the teeth,

or on the skull, these
early-career people.

My friend Davorka
Radovcic on the right

from the Natural History
Museum of Croatia.

And here's one of

the more complete skulls.

This is DH-3,
Dinaledi Hominin 3.

This is the skull
of an old woman.

And I'll show you that tooth set

in comparison to the others.

We know how old they
are from their teeth,

if they preserve them.

Here's a couple
more of the skulls.

Here, I like to show
how much we have, right?

Here are all pieces
of the brow ridge.

Here are pieces of
the temporal bone,

just in front of the ear.

Here are pieces of cheekbones.

Here's the back of the skull.

But, in addition to this,
we can use our scans

to virtually reconstruct things.

And this gives us a
lot of information

about the structure
of these things.

So, here's DH-3 from the front.

And here's a reconstruction
of what its endocast was like.

The inside of its
brain, of its skull,

gives us some indication of
the outside of its brain.

And that doesn't tell us a lot
about the function of the brain,

but it does give us a
great idea of its size.

These hominins had
brains about a third

the size of yours and mine.

So, they're really quite small.

And yet their
skull is structured

very much like homo erectus,

a species that
typically has brains

about twice the size of this.

So, in structure, it's like a
more advanced-looking thing.

In size, it's like a more
primitive-looking thing.

And just a comparison,
here's teeth on the X-axis

versus brain size on the Y-axis.

Our evolution tends
to follow a trend,

where if you go from the
lower right to the upper left,

you're going actually
forward in time.

So, that Australopithecus,
our primitive ancestors,

had large teeth
and small brains.

And as we go up closer
and closer to us,

through our genus, homo,

you get smaller teeth
and bigger brains.

So there's this sort
of dual set of trends.

Homo naledi that you see there,

the white bar, is small
teeth, small brain.

And that's very atypical.

That's not the kind of
relation we expect to see.

My friend John Gurche,
who's, in my mind,

the best art
reconstructor of fossils,

has done a reconstruction for us

of what our most
complete skull, DH-1,

would have looked like in life.

So, that bust is
based on this skull.

DH-2 is the skull that
you saw them working on

there in the cave that came up
in, ultimately, a cereal bowl.

That was the best thing for it.

It laid upside-down
in a cereal bowl

and we put it inside
of that lunch box

and it came up through the cave.

(audience laughs)

And here's DH-1, the most
complete of the skulls.

Well, I'll say a few
words about teeth

because teeth we get a
lot of information out of.

And we're still getting
information out of these teeth.

We've done micro-CT scanning

of all of the teeth
in the collection.

And so we're now studying

the internal structure
of the teeth.

We will go on to study
their development.

So, we'll get some idea of
how fast these individuals

may have developed in their
lives by studying that way.

We will also study their
isotopes to get some idea

of what fraction of their diet

may have come from
different food sources.

So, we'll get a lot of
information from these teeth.

But for me, somebody who's
used to working on teeth

from other collections
that are large,

the most exciting thing is,

is that we can get a
picture of what this group

would've been like
when it was alive.

Because here is an array

of the more complete
of the dentitions.

This is six dentitions
representing a range of ages.

So that, at the upper left,

we have a nearly complete set
of teeth, upper and lower.

These are all baby teeth

except for the very
bottom ones there,

in the upper-left set.

Those are the first
permanent molars.

This is a set of
teeth from a toddler

around the age of two or three,

if this was human
terms, in terms of age.

Probably they developed a
little faster than we do.

So, probably a little younger.

At the bottom right, you
have the oldest individual.

That individual has almost
worn her teeth completely out,

so that they're worn all
the way down to the roots.

In fossil terms, that usually
means that this individual

is somewhere in their mid-30s.

So, if you think old, old, old,

that's old, old,
old for these folks.

And we have
everything in between.

We have children.

We have at least eight children

in the collection
of a range of ages.

We have infants, including
one either newborn

or near-term fetus.

We have, we have young children.

We have older
children, adolescents.

And we have young adults
and one very old adult.

So, this is a picture of the
demography of a population.

We've never had that before.

Not from one site like this.

And certainly not from as
primitive a hominin as this is.

So, this gives us
unique information

that we're only really starting
to be able to work with.

This is my favorite thing
in the whole collection,

because when you have
a bunch of loose teeth

that you've found in a
cave, fitting them together

is like the greatest
puzzle ever.

(audience laughs)

Because there are
biological clues

about which teeth
go together and how.

And they leave
traces on each other

so that you can
actually discover,

"Ah! This tooth goes with this!"

Last month, I was there

and we had a tooth
come out of the cave

because we had to
sample another tooth

for some dating
methods, and I said,

"Ah! I know exactly
where this goes!

"I know whose tooth that is."

The clues are there.

So, this is my favorite,

because it's this beautiful,
beautiful condition dentition.

This is the entire
set of lower teeth

and we have most
of the upper teeth

as well of this individual,
of what in human terms

would be about a
nine- or ten-year-old.

But we have not only
the skull and the teeth,

which we often have
at other sites,

we have the rest
of the skeleton.

And we have lots and
lots and lots of parts

of the rest of the skeleton,

including complete
articulated parts.

So, this in the site is the
right hand of an individual.

The fingers are
bent over like this

so that you see the
intermediate phalanges,

these middle parts of the
fingers bent over like that.

This is what you
call a death pose.

Because here's the hand
and it's gone like this.

And all of the bones are there.

The only bone lacking
from this hand

is this little one in the
wrist, the pisiform bone.

If you fall on the
ice, don't do it,

but if you do and you throw
your wrist down like this,

this one you might break
or at least dislocate.

So, it's there.

We don't have that bone.

We have every other bone

from every other
individual, it's amazing.

Put this together and
this hand, by itself,

and we have parts of many hands.

We have 150 hand and wrist
elements in the collection.

We have 190 teeth
in the collection.

It is an amazing sample.

But this hand itself has
this mixture of features

that indicate different things.

Its wrist and its
palm is fundamentally

a human wrist and palm.

But its fingers are very curved

relative to our fingers.

Its fingertips, you can
see them, the fingertips,

they're broad at the end.

A chimpanzee's fingertips
or the fingertips

of some of our early ancestors

are very narrow at the end.

That's because we
use our fingertips to
grip things strongly

when we're making and
using stone tools.

You guys aren't making
or using stone tools

but your fingers are
still well-made for it.

And you grip
strongly, powerfully

through your fingertips
because of it.

These guys, we've never found
a stone tool yet in our site.

So, I can't say for sure
that they were doing that,

but their hands are
sure made for it.

But those curved fingers
mean that their hands

were also well-made for
gripping onto things like this

and suspending weight from them.

Which tells us that they
were probably climbing.

Climbing a great deal, we think.

But the one thing that's
weird about this hand

that we've never
seen before anywhere

is the bone that connects

the thumb to the wrist.

That bone in the
palm of your hand

that moves like this because
it's a first metacarpal.

And it's the one that
roots your thumb there.

You can see that this
is a powerful thumb.

But that bone in particular,

the wrist end of that bone
is at the bottom here.

The thumb end of
that is at the top.

And this bone is totally wrong.

Because you can see that it
is thicker at the distal end,

the thumb end, than it
is at the wrist end.

This is like a
Popeye thumb, right?

He's got those massive
forearms and they're wrong.

This is wrong.

We've never seen
anything else like this.

But I love to show this slide,

because sometimes
people will say,

"Well you found
something unique,

"that was probably
just a weirdo.

"That was probably just
a strange individual."

We've got seven of these!

(audience laughs)

They're all
morphologically the same.

They all have this
strange character.

And that tells us
that this is actually

a characteristic of Homo naledi.

This is something about the way

that it was adapting
to its environment

that gave it this
unique morphology.

You can see the curvature
there of those fingers.

And the forearms, the
upper limbs let's say,

are actually really slender.

You look at that humorous.

I've printed it here.

This is a really slender bone.

And when we look at
the rest of the post,

and we have juveniles of
most of these as well.

So, we can look at that
developmental aspect as well.

This is an adult humorous.

This is a juvenile humorous.

And on both cases
the head of this,

that connects to your
shoulder is broken off.

But the distal
end is there here,

and just short of there here.

So, this is the bone of probably
a six- or seven-year-old

and this is the
bone of an adult.

These are little,
slender, but long

compared to how thin they are.

And we're gonna see
that throughout.

The shoulders of Homo naledi,

to make a long story
short, are like this.

They are oriented on
the body of Homo naledi

as if they're made to
reach up and climb stuff.

They are not oriented in
the way that ours are,

which is fundamentally
with our scapulas down here

and to the side of our bodies,

well made for winding up

and throwing stuff
or hitting stuff.

Homo naledis are made
for climbing stuff.

And the clavicles match,
these long, long collarbones.

We've got lots of feet.

My graduate student, my
Ph.D. student I should say,

who now is an anatomy professor

at Lincoln-Memorial
University, Zach Throckmorton,

came from UW and is
one of the experts

working on the feet
of Homo naledi.

We've got many partial feet,

many of them also found in
articulation in the site.

The most complete one shows a
foot which, in Zach's words,

right,

"This is as human
as yours and mine."

It's got the arches
that our feet have.

It's got the proportions
of the toes that ours do.

The lateral toes there, we have
most of the bones of those.

But it's really hard
with little toe bones

to know for sure which is which.

So we don't show them in
the diagram like this.

We've got them oriented there

on the cover of
the "On Wisconsin."

So you can see all the toe
bones, and one finger bone.

It's not my fault.

(audience laughs)

You see all the toe bones.

This is a toe that's
made for upright walking,

bipedal striding, but in a
essentially human-like way.

It is a human foot.

And that contrasts with
things like the shoulder,

which is not like
a human shoulder.

The lower limb,
here's the tibia.

Likewise, long and slender,

and you start getting a picture
for how big those guys are.

You can see that all
these bones are slender.

All these bones are skinny.

Whatever height they are,

they seem like they're
not very thick.

They're not massive
for their height.

When we work with these
numbers from the long bones,

we estimate that
these guys stand

about four-and-a-half
to five feet tall.

So they're human-sized.

They're not big-human-sized

but they're the size of
small-bodied human populations.

People like Pygmies,
like the Khoisan people

of South Africa,
yeah, South Africa,

like the Andaman Islanders.

Folks around the world who
are small-bodied populations,

Homo naledi is their size.

Again, juvenile tibiae.

We've got at least eight
adult proximal femora.

I've got a bunch of them
printed here as well.

The femur is different from
the rest of the hindlimb.

The feet are human.

The tibiae are long and
slender, but basically human.

The femur, across
it, is mostly human.

But you get to that
proximal femur,

and the neck of
that proximal femur,

the part that connects to
your hip joint, is long.

And I'll tell you
exactly why that is...

when we look at the hip...

which is flared
outwards like this.

And so if I take a
piece of the hip,

and the hip is a tragedy.

My post-doc here,
Caroline Van Sickle,

her specialty is the hip.

And she worked
with us on the team

that was working on the hips.

Some of you might have
gone to her lecture

when she did Wednesday
Nite @ the Lab.

So, I always tell people
that the hip is a tragedy.

And she's like,
"Why is it tragic?"

Well, it's tragic
because we have,

actually, a lot of
broken pieces of it.

And we get a lot of
anatomical clues from those.

And I've just sent her to Madrid

where she's working with
specialists who've reconstructed

what this hip might've
looked like from the pieces.

But the first clue that we get

is that when we
orient this properly,

you see that is just
flares outwards like this

and the femur necks
are long to match.

This is a dynamic
that we see in some

of the earliest bipedal
hominins, the australopiths.

It's a dynamic that shows
that they have great force

to keep their bodies upright.

They have very good
leverage for that.

And they have a
lot of hip swing.

But it's not very human-like.

We have a much more
vertically-oriented hip.

And ours are much better made

for long-distance
walking and running.

So, this is a very
primitive confirmation

to go with that very
human-like foot.

And that's a bit
of a puzzle for us.

We haven't worked it out yet.

So, when you look across
the whole body, Homo naledi,

and this is John's
drawing of this,

and I think he's done
just a great job.

On the very left, we have Lucy.

Her species is
Australopithecus afarensis.

It's one of the most
primitive bipedal hominins.

Afarensis is small.

Lucy stood just a bit
over three feet tall.

Next to her is the
most complete skeleton

of Homo erectus, reconstructed.

This is a skeleton from Kenya.

It's called the stripling youth,

or the boy from Nariokotome.

And people always remember
how to say Nariokotome

because it's pronounced
like frontal lobotomy.

(audience laughs)

I will never forget
when I was taught that.

So, now I'm transmitting it.

And on the right
you see Homo naledi.

Homo naledi's in
between these two

in stature, the size of
a small-bodied human.

But I think John has done the
shoulders especially well.

He's done the thinness well.

He's done the stance,
I think, well.

It is a very human-like stance.

But it doesn't
look quite like us.

And that's what you
get with Homo naledi.

We do not know how old
the fossil assemblage is.

We have excavated it from
a very uncommon setting.

It does not have the
bone embedded in rock.

We do not have as
clear of indicators

of the antiquity of the bone.

And you might say, "Well,
the bone's probably young."

And that's a possibility.

This bone could actually be

relatively young
in fossil terms.

That would still be
tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands
of years old,

but it might be very
different in age

from other things in the area.

But I have worked on
hominin collections,

Dmanisi in the Republic
of Georgia for instance,

where the bone is two
million years old nearly,

but is also very fragile and
not embedded in hard rock.

So we don't know for sure

the age of this
from the condition.

We are working in
the site to discover

the age of the fossils
by bracketing them

with flow stone deposits.

We have flowstones that are
above our fossil deposit.

We're working to discover

what is at the bottom
of the fossil deposit.

And the density
of bone means that

we don't just dig right
through with a drill, right?

So we actually have to be
very careful about this.

And that is holding us
up on determining a date.

But you can see
the possibilities.

It is a very primitive
member of our genus.

It's like maybe the
earliest examples

of Homo erectus with
a smaller brain.

It's like Homo habilis,
a very primitive member

of our genus, with
a smaller brain

but with more advanced aspects

of the feet and
hands, for instance.

So, it looks like it's
rooted in our family tree

around the time that
our genus originated,

maybe two to two-and-a-half
million years ago,

possibly earlier.

But the fossils may be
much younger than that.

They could be that age, right?

It could be, "Wow!
This is our ancestor."

Or it could be that the
fossils have survived

alongside other species that
evolved more similar to us.

And we don't know.

So, when we draw
the family tree,

you can say that homo
here is the bottom branch,

and these orange species
are different kinds of homo.

Homo naledi is this green one.

And maybe it's very recent.

Maybe it lived alongside
of even modern humans.

That's a possibility.

Maybe it's the age
we think it is.

It's even a possibility
it's much older

than it sort of ought to be.

In which case it would
establish an earlier date

for the origin of our
genus than we thought.

So, discovering the date takes
on some primary importance

in understanding
what happened to lead

to the evolution of humans
and other species of homo.

Well as Tom indicated,

we had a lot of news
with this discovery.

This is my photo on the New
York Times, just wonderful.

The international attention to
this has been just enormous.

It has been really,
really great to see

that our science has gotten
this kind of attention.

This is the skull right?

I'm the one who made away

with the one the vice
president kissed.

This is the vice
president of South Africa

who appeared at our announcement

and was really nice about this.

I just, it is so neat
to be in South Africa,

in many ways still a
developing country,

still investing in
its strategic areas

of scientific advantage.

Fossils, obviously, a huge area

where they are
pushing their science

and to have, at the highest
levels of government

that recognize the
importance of this.

At our announcement,
the vice president said,

"This work demonstrates
the scientific basis

"for a common humanity."

And that is what it does.

This is showing our ancestry.

The things that tie us
together, historically,

are things that came from
these ancient species.

And discovering how they lived

is telling us about
that shared history

that every human
around the world has,

especially in countries
like South Africa

where you have this
huge human diversity

that has had a history
of great troubles.

Being able to contribute
on the scientific side

to showing the common humanity
is incredibly important.

Of course, any time
there's a great discovery,

you get in the comics.

(audience laughs)

"Fossils of New Human Species

"Found in African
Cave" is the headline.

"Did we discover an
extinct caveman too?

"Not quite."

He's got the artifacts of
our political campaigns,

Trump has a club,
Donald was here.

But in South
Africa, this took on

a really, sort of
more spirited view.

This was when the Rugby
World Cup was happening.

And as you can see
here Homo naledi

was ready to join the
team, the Springboks.

If you guys have seen that
movie with the Springboks.

It really is like that there.
They're crazy for their rugby.

And, it's neat to be,

"This is the most
experienced Bok Team ever,

"with a million
years between them."

(audience laughs)

But when it comes down to it,

we have just an enormous
amount of work left to do.

We've done as much, I think,

as possible to get
this out to the public.

Not only through our
participation in social media,

but also here we put
the fossils on exhibit.

For the first time ever,
a new fossil discovery

of hominins on exhibit
for the public.

And record-breaking 10 times
the ordinary visitation

to the visitor center of
the World Heritage Site

to see these fossils.

As you can see, school groups,

people of all ages coming out.

It was just a unique thing.

When they left they put
on a farewell concert

and they had some
of the greatest acts

in South Africa on stage
to salute Homo naledi.

It was really something.

So, that was really special.

But we've also
made great strides

in sharing the scientific
results more broadly.

In paleoanthropology it is...

From my point of view,

I've been in the
field for 20 years,

from my point of view,

sad that our students
cannot handle

fossil casts from some
of the most famous

fossils in the world.

You can't get a
cast of Lucy now.

You cannot get copies
of these fossils

to show to your students.

We want to change that.

We made our priority to share

this information as
broadly as possible.

We published our work in
eLife, an open access journal.

And we put our fossil
scans on the web

so that anyone
can download them.

We, to date, have had
nearly 10,000 downloads

of these from around the world.

And people are using those to
print out fossils everywhere.

I show up places to give a talk

and they'll say,
"Here's our naledi!"

It's amazing!
(audience laughs)

I've been printing them in
my lab like crazy, right?

So, I've got
fossils to bring in.

But for us the important thing

is that this is a South
African discovery.

And so the chancellor
of Wits University,

the university that hosts our
work and hosts the fossils,

at our announcement
said these words.

And I think they're
really important.

Because they show the way the
world of science is changing.

"We often talk about science
as having no boundaries,

"but in our world
scientific knowledge

"has become commodified,
and too often,

"what should be the
bequest of the world,

"the bequest of a
common humanity,

"is locked up under pay walls
that postgraduate students

"and researchers
cannot get access to."

We're at a tremendous advantage

here at the University
of Wisconsin

because almost anything
that I want to read,

the library will get for me.

This is not the case
in most of the world.

It is not the case
in South Africa.

And so to be able
to do this work

in South Africa and
give it to the world.

As he said, "What we did
when we made this discovery,

"was we put the
cameras in the cave,

"we streamed it live.

"We partnered with eLife,
an open access journal,

"to make sure that the discovery

"was available to
all of humanity.

"And what we did
in that practice,

"is create the first elements
of a common global academy.

"We're not simply going
to be beneficiaries

"of open access, but
we are going to be

"contributors to open access."

This isn't Africa coming
with its hands out

looking for people
to give stuff.

This is Africa providing
the best that it has

to the rest of the
world as a bequest

of a common humanity.

And so, to be a part of that
project, with that priority,

for me, is
tremendously important.

You guys are gonna want to know,
how did the bodies get in there?

We have a very unique situation.

A situation in which
we have no other

medium or large mammals
other than hominins.

Aside from the hominin bones,

we have six pieces
of a bird's leg

and some teeth and a couple
of other bones from mice.

And those mice teeth
and bones, we think,

we're pretty confident, were
there before our hominins.

They're in a different
deposit than our hominins.

Our hominins are there
in what look like

at least two different
depositional events.

The bird we think
probably came in later,

'cause it's on the surface,

it's preserved differently
from the hominin bone.

That's what we got.

This chamber is where it is.

It is remote.

It's, for our team,
very difficult to reach.

We do not believe
it would've been

as difficult to
reach in the past.

Caves change over time.

And we think the
geology of this cave

probably made it easier
to access in the past.

But we can tell from the
sediments in this chamber

that this chamber was
never open to the surface.

These hominins didn't fall in.

They were not washed in.

There's no, there's
nothing in there

that's indicative of
water of the strength

that it would take to move bone.

And we've got parts of bodies
that are fully articulated.

It's clear that the bodies
entered this chamber whole.

We've got great traces
of what happened

to these bones at the
time of decomposition.

We've got the little traces

that beetle
mandibles make on it.

But in all of this, on no
bone do we have something

that is a mark made
by a carnivore.

So, there we have it.

They weren't dragged
in by carnivores.

They were not
subject to predation.

There's no carnivore that
only eats hominins anyway,

not 15 of them.

(audience laughs)
They're of all ages.

This isn't people that
were exploring a cave

and got unluckily
trapped there, right?

Unless they were exploring
with babes in arms.

They were not living there.

There's no sign of detritus
that they would've, you know,

of the stuff that they
ate, they left in there.

They were clearly not
using this chamber.

They may have been
using other chambers.

We're investigating this,

but they weren't using
this chamber to be in,

except to have
their bodies in it.

We think the most
likely scenario

is that Homo naledi deliberately
deposited them there.

This species with a brain
a third the size of ours

was collecting its dead and
putting them in this place.

That tells us something
really interesting,

really important I think.

A lot of people come
away with that and say,

"Well, did they have religion?

"Was there some belief
system that they had?"

We don't think that.

I think it's not a
scientific question,

at this stage, obviously.

We don't think that.

We think that what
they had was emotion.

We think that they had feeling
for other social beings.

We see this among
other primates.

So we know that this is
something that's not a stretch.

What's different
is that Homo naledi

had a culture that said,

"When the bodies are
dead, put them here."

That's a minimum.

That's all that
it took, we think.

But that does tell us a lot.

It tells us that these
were cultural creatures.

We can't find a
better explanation

at this moment
for what happened.

But we're still investigating.

I can tell you that there
are other hominin remains

inside the Rising Star
Cave in different places.

So, we will learn more
about what happened here.

We may discover other
species of things,

or species we
already know about.

We may find more of Homo naledi.

Just this week,
from a nearby cave,

Sterkfontein, was
reported a new area.

This cave is one
of the most famous

in the world for
producing hominin fossils,

but a team was working in a
different area of the cave

and recovered a
tooth and a finger.

And that tooth could
be Homo naledi.

It looks a lot like it.
We're not sure.

We have to look at it in person.

But one of the people working
on it is Travis Pickering,

here in the department
of anthropology.

So, we've really got
the corner on the market

of Homo naledi at the moment.

It's exciting because
anywhere we look,

we could turn this
up and discover

the next piece of evidence.

But what this cave tells
us more than anything else...

it's less than two
miles from some

of the most famous fossil
sites in the world,

and there it was, with
the largest assemblage

of fossil hominins ever in
Africa waiting to be found.

The next place we look could
have something just as cool.

It's clear that we've only
begun to scratch the surface

of what there is to discover.

In a place where people thought,

"Well, people have been
looking for 70 years,

"what more could
there be to find?"

When you find
something like this,

and realize that the rest
of the continent is there,

unexplored at that
level of detail.

Our science is going
to change a lot

in the next several years, and
this is just the beginning.

So keep watching.

This is gonna be
an exciting time.

We're discovering new
things all the time.

We're going to have
more new things

out of Rising Star and
within, I'd say, a year,

you're going to hear
some really crazy stuff.

So, keep watching.

Thank you everybody
for coming out.

(applause)