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Hello, you're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Freddie Chick and today I'm taking you back to 2001 and the discovery of one of

humanity's oldest known ancestors in the middle of the Chadian desert.

I've been speaking to Michelle Brunei, a French paleontologist who'd spent 25 years searching

the world for early hominid fossils. Africa, the cradle of humanity, where sometime in the distant past, apes evolved into

modern humans. Just how that happened has remained a mystery

until perhaps now. In July 2001 in the Jura desert in Chad

Michelle Brunet's team of paleontologists discovered a 7 million year old skull.

During my life I saw a lot of us in a lot.

This one is a very special one.

The fossil, named the Helanthropist Chodenses, was nicknamed Tumai.

There's no question.

He's more chimpanzee-like than human.

But Tumai was moving around on two legs

very close to the time our ancestors split from chimpanzees.

To Mai was presented to the world as the earliest known ancestor of humankind.

...