Telling the tale of human origins, one fossil tooth at a time

Where did we come from? How did humanity, with our complicated civilizations and all our human quirks and foibles, come to be? Much of what we know about those questions traces back to important fossil finds in Ethiopia.  

Paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie has been key in that hunt for answers. A skilled fossil-finder, he’s helped discover some of the most important known hominid fossils, including the bones used to describe the 2.5-million-year-old Australopithecus garhi, the first pieces of a 4.4-million-year-old partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, and fossils of the 5.8-million-year-old Ardipithecus kadabba, to name a few.

He joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about what fieldwork is really like, big questions in human origins, and making the field of paleoanthropology more equitable. 

Guest:

Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie is the director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, and a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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