Welcome to the Ruthless, Cutthroat World of Paleoanthropology
Meave Leakey, now matriarch of the Leakey dynasty, made one of her greatest discoveries in 2001: the flat-faced skull of Kenyanthropus, a 3.3 million-year-old toolmaker.Credit.Annie Wells/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images
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By Steve Brusatte
By Kermit Pattison
By Meave Leakey with Samira Leakey
Among the riot of species that have lived on Earth over the last four billion years, only we can ponder our own origins and it often angers the blood. We’re long past any serious debate that humanity evolved from apes in Africa a few million years ago, but the scientists looking for ever older bones of our ancestors always seem to be squabbling. At least that’s their reputation. Stay away from paleoanthropology, I was told as a young student smitten with fossils, and study less controversial stuff instead, like dinosaurs.