[MUSIC] If you want to understand how and why humans evolved you have to look at what was going on immediately before that event. You have to look at everything leading into it. And this is a central part of that. This is where the first apes emerged. It's where they thrived. [MUSIC] And eventually from one of those villages emerged our own. So we've come here to Rusinga to get a better understanding of the origins of humanity. [MUSIC] >> The skull of Proconsul was initially discovered before the second world war by Mary Leaky, working on the island of Rusinga. And they found the skull. And they found a few bits of the long bones of the skeleton. And half a century later, people came along and discovered many more Proconsul remains. And figured out that this was a very good example of what our ancestors would have been like 20 million years ago. So we knew the animal pretty well. We had lots of bones of it. What we didn't have was the bigger picture. And this project was aimed at creating the bigger picture. [MUSIC] >> So the goal of the project is to understand the evolutionary pressures on Proconsul. And that means the environment it lived in. Questions like was it very successful at living in different environments. Or was it a type of animal that was probably quite sensitive to environmental change. [INAUDIBLE] So yeah, we're at the site of Kaswanga here in Rusinga. It's been excavated and looked at since the 1930s. But what really was not done, was a lot of contextual work to find out all the types of animals and all the types of plants that are living at particular times. [SOUND] >> That's not too bad. We want to try to identify the bones of animals which lived with Proconsul, because we learn more about the environment through these other animals than we can by looking just at the, at the primates. I think we have a choice between a rhinoceros. Or an anthracothere here. The anthracothere are, remember they're related to hippo. It doesn't exist anymore, but it's related to hippo. The neck of the hippo is more distinct. [INAUDIBLE] [SOUND] [MUSIC] >> Wow, that's a really big croc tooth. [MUSIC] >> That's a little, a little rodent, but it's not fused, so it's, it's not fully adult and, yeah, yeah, real question mark. >> Okay. >> Look at that here. It's mammal. >> huh. >> At Kaswanga we're finding a lot of different fossils. We're finding very large animals like extinct relatives of rhinos and hippos. We're finding lots of crocodiles. We're finding some wonderful carnivore remains. And it's unusual to get all those things in one place. Particularly when the geologists are telling us that the broader area was quite dry and open. So you might imagine an equivalent today, like a watering hole, where you've got primates living in the trees. You've got lots of animals coming in to drink. And you know, obviously some of them are dying for certain reasons and getting accumulated around it. So that's one type of environment Proconsul was living in. But we want to know whether Proconsul could live in different environments. Because certain animals are quite versatile and certain are not. And that's a very important part of an animal's evolutionary biology. So, we're looking at another side on the island where we've found some specimens. Were found. [MUSIC] >> The Waregi site is a fair amount younger than the Kasawanga site. It's maybe a hundred or a couple hundred thousand years younger. So we can compare those sites to understand how Proconsul's environment was changing through time. >> This is one of the only ones where we can actually get an in situ root >> Right. >> in the soil. >> So can you just like. >> We were here looking for fossils. >> Yeah. >> And we found these long, linear things just sort of poking out from within the rock. And it sort of, it looked different from the surrounding rock. [SOUND] And as we continued to dig in, we discovered that they traced in a single direction. Some of them branched. And so that suggests that they were the roots of trees. [MUSIC] So all of these roots here are pointing towards the cylindrical mound right here. And based on its size and shape, being that it's so round, and the fact that we have lots of roots tracing into it we, we think that it's very likely that this represents, sort of a cast of where a fossil tree was. And so this is the reminant of one of the trees within this forest. >> At Waregi we found fossil tree trunks in place and fossil roots in place, as well as leaves above those. And so we know that that must have been a forested environment. [MUSIC] There were definitely large trees, as well as some smaller trees. And they were probably relatively closely spaced. [MUSIC] You would have felt like you were walking in the woods. [MUSIC] >> So, we're finding different environments at Kaswanga and at Waregi. You've got proconsul at both sites. So, proconsul, therefore, is quite able to, cope with different types of environments. That's really interesting. [SOUND] >> Zoologists generally divide animals into generalists and specialists. And certainly the primates to which we belong and we ourselves particularly, are the ultimate generalists. We manage to get by in many different environments, probably more so than any other creature. [SOUND] And what Proconsul tells us is that, in fact, we are biologically adaptable, too. That we are the inheritors of a tradition of biological adaptability. When the environment changes Our precursors didn't just disappear. They actually changed their behaviors in a way that made it possible for them to continue living in the same place. [NOISE] >> How's it looking there? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Oh, we're getting some movement, this is good. [NOISE] >> Paleontology is a historical science. Insofar as it's trying to understand the history of life, and the history of the world, and the history of the interactions among the creatures who live in that world. So nature has created a history, and therefore the job of the paleontologist, is to reconstruct that history as a preliminary to understanding more about the creatures themselves. [MUSIC]
