Open Science with Prof. Lee Berger
This week we're extremely excited to bring you our conversation with the incredible Prof. Lee Berger. He shares stories from his work, and we talk about his efforts to include new people in his discipline and make his science more accessible to everyone. In the news, we talk about a sharkano, and dynamic dinos.
Our Guest
Lee Berger is an award-winning researcher and paleoanthropologist. His explorations into human origins in Africa over the past 25 years have resulted in the discovery of more individual fossil hominin remains than any other exploration program in the history of the search for human origins in Africa. Among Berger’s many notable finds, the discoveries of two new species of ancient human relatives are especially noteworthy. In 2008 he found Australopithecus sediba, fossil remains of remarkable completeness that showed an intriguing mix of apelike and humanlike characteristics. In 2013 his team found another new species of ancient human relative, Homo naledi, amid the richest early hominin site yet found in Africa. Berger has served in a number of advisory roles, including the Global Young Academy, the Jane Goodall Institute South Africa, and has chaired the Fulbright Commission. Berger is the Phillip Tobias Chair in Palaeoanthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. A current National Geographic Explorer at Large, Berger won the first National Geographic Society Research and Exploration Prize in 1997. In 2016, he was named the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year and included in Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 Most Influential People. [From National Geographic]
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