Origin Stories

In this episode, we talk with Evan Hadingham, senior science editor for the PBS program NOVA. His new book, Discovering Us: 50 Great Discoveries in Human Origins, highlights the thrilling fossil finds, groundbreaking primate behavior observations, and important scientific work of Leakey Foundation researchers. Want to win your own copy of the book? Take our listener survey for a chance to win one of three giveaway copies! Discovering Us is also available for sale anywhere you buy books, but when you buy it through bookshop.org, 10% of the proceeds go to support our work. Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach. Support this show and the science we talk about. Your donations will be matched by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.

leakeyfoundation.org/donate

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream on the first and third Thursday of every month.

leakeyfoundation.org/live

This episode was produced by Ray Pang. Our editor is Audrey Quinn. Theme music by Henry Nagle. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lee Roservere.

2021 was a big year in science! Fossil discoveries introduced new relatives to our family tree, new findings added fascinating twists to the human story, and breakthroughs in research methods opened new worlds to explore. In this episode, five scientists discuss their favorite human origins discoveries of 2021.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Our guests:

Scott A. Williams, New York UniversityJessica Thompson, Yale UniversityGiulia Gallo, University of California at DavisFernando Villanea, University of Colorado at BoulderErin Kane, Boston University

Read more about their top discoveries:

Dragon Man

Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin cranium represents a new Homo species

Stunning 'Dragon Man' skull may be an elusive Denisovan—or a new species of human

'Dragon man' claimed as new species of ancient human but doubts remain

SedaDNA

Unearthing Neanderthal population history using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from cave sediments

Bacho Kiro

Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry

Early Homo sapiens groups in Europe faced subarctic climates

Like Neanderthals, Early Humans Endured a Frigid Europe

White Sands footprints

Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum

Ancient Footprints Push Back Date of Human Arrival in the Americas

National Park Services White Sands Website

Camera trap research on Dryas monkeys

A natural history of Chlorocebus dryas from camera traps in Lomami National Park and its buffer zone, Democratic Republic of the Congo, with notes on the species status of Cercopithecus salongo

Using local knowledge and camera traps to investigate occurrence and habitat preference of an Endangered primate: the endemic dryas monkey in the Democratic Republic of the Congo-

Picture Perfect: Camera Traps Find Endangered Dryas Monkeys

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

This month, thanks to Jorge and Ann Leis and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, all donations will be quadruple-matched. Click here to make a donation!

Credits

This episode was hosted and produced by Meredith Johnson and Ray Pang. Our editor is Audrey Quinn.

Music by Henry Nagle and Lee Roservere. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Please send us your questions!

Have a question about human evolution? Something you've always wondered about? We will find a scientist to answer it on a special episode of Origin Stories!

There are three ways to submit your question:

Leave a voicemail at +1(707)788-8582

Visit speakpipe.com/originstories and leave a message

Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live

As a young girl, Biruté Mary Galdikas dreamed of going to the forests of Southeast Asia to study the least-known of all the great apes, the elusive orangutan. People told her it would be impossible. But, in 1971, she traveled to Borneo and started what is now the longest ongoing study of orangutans in the history of science. This is her story.

She was the third in the group of now world-famous scientists known as the Trimates—Jane Goodall in Tanzania, Dian Fossey in Rwanda, and Biruté Mary Galdikas in Borneo. The Trimates were the first women to establish long-term studies of great apes in the wild. They were all mentored by Louis Leakey.

Their work formed the basis of everything science now knows about chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. And they've inspired generations of researchers and conservationists to follow in their footsteps.

Today's episode celebrates Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas and her half-century of field research and orangutan conservation work.

About our guest

Dr. Galdikas is the founder and president of Orangutan Foundation International. She's a research professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and Professor Extraordinaire at the Universitas Nasional in Jakarta. She's a 19-time Leakey Foundation grantee, and she was one of Louis Leakey's last proteges in his lifetime.

Links

• Orangutan Foundation International
• Ways to get involved
• Learn about palm oil

Credits

Ray Pang produced this episode. Sound design by Ray Pang. Our editor is Audrey Quinn. Meredith Johnson is the host and executive producer of Origin Stories. Thanks to Talain Blanchon for audio of Dr. Galdikas in the field and for recording our interview with Dr. Galdikas in his studio. And special thanks to Marcus Foley and Emily Patton for all their help.

Archival lecture audio is from The Leakey Foundation archive.

Music by Henry Nagle and Lee Roservere.

Please send us your questions!

Have a question about human evolution? Something you've always wondered about? We will find a scientist to answer it on a special episode of Origin Stories!

There are three ways to submit your question:

Leave a voicemail at +1(707)788-8582

Visit speakpipe.com/originstories and leave a message

Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

Thanks to Jeanne Newman and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, all donations to support the podcast will be quadruple-matched. Visit leakeyfoundation.org/donate and use the notes field to let us know your donation is for Origin Stories.

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live

Scientists agree that dogs evolved from wolves, but exactly how and when that happened is hotly contested. In this episode, Origin Stories contributor Neil Sandell examines the evolution of the relationship between dogs and humans, and explores the journey from wolf to dog.

This story was originally produced for the CBC program IDEAS.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Guests in this episode: (in order of appearance)

Angela Perri is an archaeologist at Durham University, U.K.

Sebastian Dicenaire is a French playwright and audio producer living in Brussels

Greger Larson is director of the Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network at the University of Oxford, U.K.

Kathryn Lord is an evolutionary biologist at the Karlsson Lab of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the Broad Institute.

Mietje Germonpré is a palaeontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels.

Sarah Marshall-Pescini is a behavioural scientist at the Wolf Science Center in Austria, and the Domestication Lab at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.

Friederike Range is a biologist and co-founder of the Wolf Science Center. She is a research professor at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.

Giulia Cimarelli is a biologist at the Wolf Science Center, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Domestication Lab at University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna.

Credits

This episode was produced by Neil Sandell. Find him on Twitter.

Send us your questions!

Have a question about human evolution? Something you've always wondered about? We will find a scientist to answer it on a special episode of Origin Stories!

There are three ways to submit your question:

• Leave a voicemail at (707) 788-8582
• Visit speakpipe.com/originstories and leave a message
• Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

All donations to support the podcast will be quadruple-matched thanks to Jeanne Newman and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Visit leakeyfoundation.org/donate and use the notes field to let us know your donation is in support of Origin Stories.

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live

Learn about the evolution of our extraordinary ability to cool ourselves down. Biological anthropologist Andrew Best discusses the past, present, and future of sweat in this special bonus episode.

About our guest

Dr. Andrew Best is a biological anthropologist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts who studies metabolism, endurance, and the evolution of sweat. Visit his website to learn more about him and his research.

Click here for a one-minute video about his Leakey Foundation-supported research project on the evolution of sweat glands.

Episode Transcript

• Google Doc Transcript
• PDF Transcript

Links to more sweaty science

• The science of sweat
• Giving sweat the respect it deserves
• The weird science of how sweat attracts

Open access research papers of interest

• Human Locomotion and Heat Loss: An Evolutionary Perspective
• Repeated mutation of a developmental enhancercontributed to human thermoregulatory evolution

Credits

This episode was produced by Ray Pang. To keep up with and learn more about his work, follow Ray at @PangRay on Twitter.

Our editor is Audrey Quinn. Meredith Johnson is the host and executive producer of Origin Stories.

Music by Henry Nagle and Lee Roservere.

Send us your questions!

Have a question about human evolution? Something you've always wondered about? We will find a scientist to answer it on a special episode of Origin Stories!

There are three ways to submit your question:

• Leave a voicemail at +1(707) 788-8582
• Visit speakpipe.com/originstories and leave a message
• Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

All donations to support the podcast will be quadruple-matched thanks to Jeanne Newman and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Visit leakeyfoundation.org/donate and use the notes field to let us know your donation is in support of Origin Stories.

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live!

Producer and scientist Kevin McLean travels to an island off the coast of Panama where researchers have found an isolated group of monkeys with a creative approach to surviving in a challenging environment.

Links

These tiny monkeys have entered their Stone Age with a bang

First report of habitual stone tool use by Cebus monkeys

Habitual Stone-Tool Aided Extractive Foraging in White-Faced Capuchins, Cebus Capucinus

Video of capuchins using tools

Research presentation on social learning by Leakey Foundation grantee Brendan Barrett

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies

Claudio Montezo Moreno's biodiversity research website

Send us your questions!

Have a question about human evolution? Something you've always wondered about? We will find a scientist to answer it on a special episode of Origin Stories!

There are three ways to submit your question:

• Leave a voicemail at (707) 788-8582
• Visit speakpipe.com/originstories and leave a message
• Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

All donations to support the podcast will be quadruple-matched thanks to Jeanne Newman and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Visit leakeyfoundation.org/donate and use the notes field to let us know your donation is in support of Origin Stories.

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live

The widely-held idea known as the "obstetrical dilemma" is a hypothesis that explains why babies are so helpless, and why childbirth is so difficult for humans compared to other animals.

The obstetrical dilemma suggests that babies are born early so their big brains can fit through the mother's pelvis, which can't get any wider due to our method of bipedal locomotion. This problem, the idea says, is solved by an evolutionary tradeoff that increases risks to pregnant mothers who must struggle to birth bigger and bigger-brained babies through narrow birth canals.

On this episode, Leakey Foundation grantees Dr. Holly Dunsworth and Dr. Anna Warrener describe their search for the evidence behind the obstetrical dilemma and they discuss the importance of the stories we tell about our bodies.

Send us your questions!

Have a question about human evolution? Something you've always wondered about? We will find a scientist to answer it on a special episode of Origin Stories!

There are three ways to submit your question:

• Leave a voicemail at (707) 788-8582
• Visit speakpipe.com/originstories and leave a message
• Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]

Links

The Mermaid's Tale

A Most Interesting Problem

There is no 'obstetrical dilemma': towards a braver medicine with fewer chilbirth interventions

Metabolic hypothesis for human altriciality

A Wider Pelvis Does Not Increase Locomotor Cost in Humans, with Implications for the Evolution of Childbirth

The obstetrical dilemma hypothesis: there's life in the old dog yet

YouTube - Close up video of chimp childbirth

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

All donations to support the podcast will be quadruple-matched thanks to Jeanne Newman and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Visit leakeyfoundation.org/donate and use the notes field let us know your donation is in support of Origin Stories.

Thanks

Thanks to Lynn and Larry Schafran for sponsoring this episode. We are grateful for their support of The Leakey Foundation and our educational programs.

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live

Sleep is one of the defining traits of human life. It's also one of the most mysterious. Dr. Horacio de la Iglesia is a neurobiologist who's on a quest to understand how patterns of human sleep evolved. His new research shows an unexpected connection between sleep and the cycles of the moon.

Links

de la Iglesia Lab Moonstruck Sleep It's not just the pandemic. The moon may be messing with your sleep, too The de la Iglesia Lab Sleep and Homelessness Project Science and Evolution of Sleep | Ask a Biologist

Podcast Recommendation: Our Opinions Are Correct

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

All donations to support the podcast will be quadruple-matched thanks to Jeanne Newman and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Click leakeyfoundation.donorsupport.co/page/originstories to donate!

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live

What is it like to study an endangered species like chimpanzees, knowing they may go extinct within your lifetime?

Leakey Foundation grantee Dr. Zarin Machanda is a co-director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project, a long-term field study in Uganda. This study was started by primatologist Richard Wrangham in 1987, and project members have collected daily records of the chimps there ever since.

These notes hold the life stories of around 150 chimpanzees, and this long-term data is a powerful way for scientists to understand chimpanzees–and ourselves.

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live

Links

Kibale Chimpanzee Project Dr. Zarin Machanda First Molar Eruption, Weaning, and Life History in Wild Chimpanzees No Grumpy Old Men in the World of Chimps Social selectivity in aging chimpanzees The Kasisi Project Primates and social media

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Your life story is hidden in your teeth. The days, weeks, years, and stressful events of your life are recorded in tiny timelines that can be read by scientists like Leakey Foundation grantee Dr. Tanya Smith.

She and her colleagues used fossil teeth to tell a detailed and intimate story about the lives of two Neanderthal children and the changing world they lived in.

Links

The Tales Teeth Tell What teeth can tell about the lives and environments of ancient humans and Neanderthals Wintertime stress, nursing, and lead exposure in Neanderthal children Reconstructing hominin life history

Dr. Tanya Smith's website

The Leakey Foundation

Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.

Support The Leakey Foundation

Support this show and the science we talk about. Become a monthly donor and your donations will be matched by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. leakeyfoundation.org/donate

Lunch Break Science

Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. leakeyfoundation.org/live