Hi, it's Meredith, host of origin stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast.

And I've got some news.

We'll be back in just a few weeks with our new season of brand new stories about how we became

human.

Today I have a short sneak preview of our first story about an amazing fossil discovery.

Isaiah Nango is a primate paleontologist who has spent years searching in the harsh and rocky landscape of Napudet near Lake Turkana in Kenya. He's been leading an international team of researchers trying to find fossils that will help us understand the early stages of evolution in the ape family tree.

It was a day when we didn't find a single thing.

So it's time to go back to the camp and everybody's kind of in a foul mood.

And John Ikousi, an experienced Kenyan fossil finder who works with Isaiah Nango,

pulls out some tobacco and rolls a cigarette.

So we chase him on and we say, hey man, you're going to kill us without smoke.

Go and smoke somewhere else, far away from us.

So he walks up ahead of us about a couple hundred yards.

And then we see him walking around the same spot.

We talked to each other saying, well, did you find something?

Why is he keep going around the same spot?

And as we get close about 50 yards, we yell at him,

John Hey, did you find something?

And he goes, oh yeah, I think I found something.

We asked, what is it?

He says, I think it's the knee of an elephant.

So we go and Sipronythe, the supervisor,

...