ABSTRACT
The discovery of Homo naledi is one of the most fascinating stories of paleoanthropology. Hominin fossils had been spotted in a cave in South Africa. However, this cave cannot be not easily accessed. It requires a daring, slim contortionist to traverse its restricted path to the chamber of fossil bones. Lee Berger wanted to harvest the hominin bones that his cave explorers saw and those buried beneath them, but it requires specialists to do it properly. So, he put out a worldwide call for suitably shaped anthropologists to undertake this risky mission. Amazingly, he was swamped with eager and qualified candidates. After assuring for their safety on this arduous descent, the fossil extraction process began, and he was soon overwhelmed with pristine fossil bones. As his funding ran out, this leg of the acquisition journey came to an end. However, the session ended with numerous bones still in the cavern waiting to be retrieved. Such was the experience of Lee Berger, who directed the extraction and is now studying
the wealth of fossils in his laboratory. In this chapter, we tell his story and learn what the bones tell us about human evolution.
