In April 2008, 2008, a discovery was made in South Africa that sent shock waves through the world of paleontology.

Lee Berger at the University of Vitvortizrand in Johannesburg, with a bit of help from Google Earth, made a life-changing discovery.

In a shallow pit he uncovered the remains of two hominids, a young adolescent male and a mature female, and they had features that provide the

missing links between earlier Australopithecines and Homo rectus are immediate ancestors.

There are totally new species which the team of christened Australopithecus

Sodeba, with Sadema meaning natural spring in the local dialect.

This week, Lee and his colleagues internationally have published their discoveries on

Sadeba in the journal Science, and he kindly agreed to grant to me a privilege which has been shared by very few people around the world and that was a chance to experience the fossils for real in the flesh.

These are the two most complete early hominid skeletons that have ever been discovered.

They belong to a new species that my colleagues and I described

Australopathicus Cadeba.

It sits at about 1.95 million years old

and we've argued that it makes a pretty good transition

between the early austral

up at the scenes, Lucy, Mrs. Pleads, things like that,

and our direct ancestor Homo erectus.

How did you find these? They were found in sort of a Eureka event but at the same time

they were part of a very long process. I've been exploring this region outside of Johannesburg that we call the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage Site for the last 18 years or so.

And in the 1990s, I had conducted a survey of the area using technology available at that time, aerial photographs,

relatively primitive satellite imagery, and very expensive handheld GPS's at that time.

And I had mapped out all the caves we did know,

as well as found some new ones.

...