Meet 7 Celebrity Fossils and Find Out What Made Them Famous
These ancient skeletons have a few things in common: scientific significance, fantastic discovery stories, and exquisite timing.
What makes a fossil—like Lucy, say, or the Hobbit—a celebrity?
This is the question that writer, historian, and avid rock climber Lydia Pyne excavates in her new book, Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World’s Most Famous Human Fossils. The answer, she insists, is not just important for scientists. It also teaches us important lessons about our own origins as a species. [Meet a new species of human ancestor.]
When National Geographic caught up with Pyne at her home in Austin, Texas, she explained how the creator of Sherlock Holmes was implicated in an archaeological hoax in Britain; how a Beatles song inspired the name of the world’s most famous fossil; and why an exciting discovery story
