Crowdsourcing Helps Discover a New Species of Human
In 2013, palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger was in something of a quandary. The South Africa-based scientist had heard about a small cave filled with early human fossils, but the narrow chamber is difficult to get to.
He needed help to retrieve the remains before they deteriorated any further. So he posted a plea for assistance on social media.
The Dinaledi Chamber in the Rising Star cave system is about 50 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg and about 30 meters below ground. The only way in is through a narrow slit that is about 20 centimeters across.
Part of his message to the scientific community read:
“The catch is this—the person must be skinny and preferably small,” he wrote. “They must not be claustrophobic, they must be fit, they should have some caving experience, climbing experience would be a bonus.”
Within a few days, 60 applicants had replied, and six were chosen – all skinny women.
Discovery
When the women entered the cave they found a rich collection of fossils. There were some 1,550 fossil fragments that belonged to at least 15 individual skeletons of a previously unknown species, which has now been dubbed Homo naledi. These findings have been published in the journal eLife.
According to Prof Berger, this is the largest assemblage of fossil human relatives ever to have been discovered in Africa.
Further Crowd Collaboration
The excavation was not the end of the crowd’s involvement, because a call was put out for early-career scientists to attend a month-long workshop to analyze and describe the fossils. Furthermore, the team behind the find has uploaded the fossil data, including 3D scans to the MorphoSource repository so that scientists all over the word can study the material.
For more on the significance of the discovery, click on this Nature article.
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