History as told by the people who were there
Matt Berger was just nine years old when he made an unwitting discovery whilst chasing his dog.Matt Berger grew up as sidekick to his father Lee Berger, an adventurous paleoanthropologist – a scientist who studies the fossils of human ancestors.
"One of the biggest paleoanthropologists in the world put out an article saying 'there are no more hominid fossils in Africa to discover – we found them all, stop exploring!'" said Matt.Hoping to turn his fortunes around, Lee Berger started using a then-new platform called Google Earth to spot overlooked caves that might contain fossils.
"My dog started running away from the site. I started following him and I tripped on a log, and as I was getting myself up and dusting myself off, I noticed a little fossil in a rock on the side of this path."Matt Berger called his father over to take a look. He swiftly realised it was the fossilised collarbone of a hominid, a group of great apes that includes humans and their close ancestors.
"As we're admiring this rock and looking at it, we turn it over, and on the backside is a jaw with teeth of a hominid sticking out. And so that's when we knew this was going to be a significant find, because finding a single piece is already a huge deal – finding two in the same block, knowing that they could be from the same individual, which would lead to a partial skeleton, was almost unheard of.
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