My Trips

Lee Berger, Ph.D. - Rock Star

Prior to each voyage, Lindblad publishes the staff list and bio’s for each trip.  I try to read through these in advance to see if there’s anyone of particular interest.  I’ll start reading these personal stories diligently, but with a dozen or more bio’s, I’ll eventually retreat to skimming or deciding I’ll just learn all about these people once on board.  I remember the last name on the list was Lee Berger, Featured Guest.  I remember glancing at the bio and seeing something about anthropology and remember thinking, cool, he’ll probably have something interesting to say.  This could be good.

So, I was caught a little unaware at the welcome reception in Buenos Aires, when our kids excitedly came up to us to tell us that they had just met Lee Berger, a real-life Indiana Jones. This wasn’t your everyday anthropologist who might have a few tidbits to say, this was a world-renowned paleoanthropologist.  A hunter of early hominid fossils. 

My knowledge of what’s going in the world of paleoanthropology isn’t that current.  I could tell you a little bit about Olduvai Gorge and the Rift Valley.  I could recite the names of a few early hominid species like Australopithicus afarensis, Australopithicus robustus, Homo habilis, Lucy, etc.  I knew the names of Louis Leakey, Richard Leakey and Mary Leakey.  I couldn’t go much beyond that.

Now I can add Lee Berger to that list.  Born in the U.S., he has resided in South Africa since 1989, and works and studies at the University of Witwaterstrand in Johannesburg.  He is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.  He is primarily responsible for the discovery and description of not one, but two new species of early human.  His discoveries have graced the covers of scientific journals.  He has been instrumental in changing how paleoanthropology research is conducted and communicated.  He has helped to change the way human evolution is understood.  In 2016 he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.  Lee Berger is preeminent in the pantheon of paleoanthropology.

Through a series of three lectures, Lee told us his story.  Many researches consider a successful career to be the discovery of a few early hominid teeth, or part of a jawbone.  For the better part of two decades, that’s largely what Lee’s career was.  It changed in 2008.  While exploring fossil sites with his 9 year-old son Matthew, his dog and a colleague, Lee’s son and dog wandered off to an area where there should be no fossils.  But, Matthew soon called to him saying he found one.  Lee knew it was most likely an antelope fossil, but he didn’t want to discourage his son, so he dutifully went over to see.  Even from a distance, Lee recognized this was no antelope.  He immediately recognized this as the clavicle of an early hominid, the exact bone he had researched for his Ph.D.  A 9 year-old boy had made a discovery that many paleoanthropologists never find in a lifetime.

By the time excavation was complete, two nearly intact skeletons were extracted from the site.  When it came to classifying the find, it presented some unusual challenges.  Quite often early hominid discoveries consist of a part of the skull and nothing below the head.  Fossils might be classified into the genus Homo or Australopithicus based on very meager evidence.  The jaw, the arrangement and size of teeth, the size of the brain and the age of the bones all determine the classification.  In this case, with nearly intact skeletons, they saw characteristics of both genuses, and it reinforced how difficult classification was and how incomplete the knowledge of human evolution is.  After placing all the characteristics of his find into two categories, primitive and modern, Lee finally named his 2-million year old find Australopithicus sediba.  Because of its blend of the more primitive and more modern, he considered it to be a transitional species between the autralopithicenes and the modern homo species.

Then in 2013, lightning struck again.  Lee had commissioned some local cavers to explore some nearby caves that had previously been rich fossil hunting grounds.  Late one night, they knocked on his door to show him photos they had taken in a previously unknown chamber.  They found this chamber by squeezing through an opening about 7 inches wide followed by about a 2-meter drop.  Who would do that???  But they did.  And they found a chamber littered with what appeared to be early hominid fossils.

Wasting no time, Lee procured emergency funding, created a plan and assembled to team for excavation.  The location of the site was one of many challenges this site presented.  He needed skilled scientists, but he also needed ones who were small enough to enter the chamber.  Lee would never be able to enter the chamber himself, and has not done so to this day.  So, he spread the word via Facebook, and in short order selected a team of six lead scientists.  All skilled.  All slight in build.  All women.

By 2014, more than 1,500 individual fossils had been removed from the cave.  To put that in context, that’s more than double the number of fossils from the previously richest site in Africa.  It was done in a matter of week.  By 2015 the team announced their findings as the discovery of yet another new species.  This time it was named Homo naledi.  It’s another hybrid between what we think of as more modern adaptations and more primitive ones.  Far taller than Lucy yet smaller than Homo erectus.  From above the waist it looks more primitive with a smaller brain, broader ribcage and curved fingers.  Yet the feet and pelvis are more similar to modern humans.  These discoveries have played a role in re-examining how we think of human evolution.  Rather than a straight line from a common ancestor to the modern human, it appears much more likely evolution has been more like a branching and rejoining of several paths.  A braided river rather than a straight line.  Many species that exhibited a blend of ancient and modern traits may have coexisted over the millennia.

The other thing that’s remarkable about Lee Berger’s work is how he shared information in an open access approach.  Paleoanthropologists are notorious for being secretive and holding their discoveries closely for years.  Much of the H. naledi was shared immediately via webcams.  He has brought casts of his and other fossils to symposia, which was rarely done in the past, and he has shared digital data and even made his fossils available on request to researches wanting to study them themselves.  He was able to share fossils from Lucy that many researchers had been wanting to see for decades.  In short, he has helped to change the way research is communicated and shared.

There was even an important discovery the Lee helped us make. Most of our meals on this trip have been eaten with our family.  We sat together, usually joined by one or two other passengers.  One night, our kids, with some other passengers and staff their own age decided they wanted to organize a “kids’ table” for dinner.  That left Michele and me sitting at a table alone with one other passenger.  Then, Lee Berger and his wife asked if they could join us.  We had a delightful meal.  We talked about his work and about the trip.  We talked with his wife, a radiologist, about the state of medicine in the U.S. and South Africa.  Our kids were sitting at a nearby table with their “playgroup”, and they were clearly enjoying themselves.  But we could also see them staring over at us and our table mates.  So, we learned the way to make our kids jealous and regret not being with us is to simply eat dinner with Indiana Jones.