Discovered in 2013 and announced in 2015, Homo naledi is the newest major find in paleoanthropology. The head researcher of this project, Lee Berger, is seen as a controversial scientist by some of his peers, however. This is the researcher who recently announced his latest findings via a live stream: completely unheard of behavior in the scientific community.
An article by NOVA does a good job of summarizing the importance of the find and what Berger's critics say about his methods.
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Read the article "Archaeology's Disputed Genius" (Bascomb, 2015) at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/evolution/lee-berger/ (Links to an external site.)
Write your post on one of the following topics that focus on one of the subsections of the article:
"Homo naledi": How does Dr. Berger know that Homo naledi was mostly bipedal? What fossil hominids do you think H. naledi resembles the most
"Courting Controversy": While some paleoanthropologists take a long time, even over a decade, to publish what they know about a fossil find, Lee Berger has a quick turnaround time of a handful of years from discovery to unveiling. Consider one of these research strategies, either slow or fast work. What is an advantage of the strategy? What is a disadvantage?
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