How These Female Cavers Recovered New Human Ancestor Fossils (Exclusive Video) | National Geographic

Six remarkable young scientists squeeze through a 12 m crawl down a shoot 18 cm wide to get these fossils of a new species of early human ancestors, homon edti. It's really unusual to see all women scientists in these kinds of situations where you are expected to enter into and work within what might be considered a fairly risky or dangerous situation. Ordinarily, it's the men jumping at these things. But I think because of the size limitations on getting down into the site, women were given more of a chance to sort of get their foot in the door.

"Hello Command Center, this is Marine at the top of the shoot. I'm just about to descend. Thank you, bye." You start by descending down a fairly narrow shaft, and some tunnels you have to crawl on your stomach for about 3 m. Then you enter into another chamber; this is what we call the dragon's back, with a 4 or 5 m drop on either side.

At the top of the shaft, you start the 12 m descent into the chamber. You then go through another passageway into the main fossil chamber. The first thing that came through my mind when I went through the final slot was Howard Carter opening Tutankhamun's tomb and Lord Carnarvon saying, "What do you see?" and Carter says, "Things, wonderful things."

"Wow, God, this place is beautiful. There is no find like this anywhere else. This is extraordinary on every level." It's almost hard to put into words what this is going to mean for the story that we tell ourselves about where we came from. We're really after this story; this is what excites us.

It's not entirely clear at this point how it got there. They are so unusual; it doesn't seem to fit any currently known paradigm for fossil hominins. Unfortunately, the level of CO2 within this particular chamber of the cave system has biked to a critical point, so we need to leave, so we're not all suffocating. We need to get to the surface; CO2 up to 1,300.

Those first couple of days were probably some of the hardest, most difficult days of their life physically because I was scared to leave people down there for too long. I was trying to rotate them out, which forced them to climb in and out this torturous path.

"How fantastic!" and they, of course, were like horses chomping at the bit to get in there. You know, we're ready to get out and ready to go back in. "Have a blast, huh?"

Thank you. We do. To be face to face with these fossils and to be touching them and handling them, it's very humbling. Just being able to be a part of this find is a wonderful honor.