San antonio and this is my colleague, lydia pine. We like to thank you for coming to the session and we want to thank the San Antonio Public Library and the Southwest School of arts and crafts for opening up their abilities for this great event today. We are also supposed to encourage people to post any of your photos, tweets, put those up on social media and use the as a book festival. Idea have those to hand out so definitely stop by and pick up your where copy of the child from today. Absolutely. So let me introduce lith lidia pine shes in the culture she got undergraduate degree in anthropology from arizona state. Sorry. [laughter] and also received a ph. D. In history at asu as well. She has done archive work and southwest, africa, eat yoap why and uzbekistan and iran, and countrily living in austin where she has a position as a visiting tell fellow at the studies texas in austin. Seven skeleton is a readable book and brings to light celebrity of fossils is her third book. And her work is appeared in places like the atlantic, appendix and review and join e in in welcoming lidia [applause] well, thank you for coming i really appreciate you guys taking the time to come out and talk fossil and history of science im really excited. Im excited to spend time here to talk about seven skeleton of the world human fossils last book here and to also talk about the nature of celebrity science. How do scientific discoveries become famous . Why do certain scientific discoveries become famous and others dont . These were with the questions those sets of questions were what really motivated me to start working on this particular book project. The idea that we know certain things really well. We know charles darwin. We know isaac newton. We know about lucy famous fossil. But why do we know about those instead of other things that did just as much for the Scientific Community . Were with able to put forward scientific ideas. All of those sofortsz sorts of things so that underscored by interest in writing a book like seven skeletons. Which sort of brings us to the point what had is seven skeletons about it. It is about seven skeleton no its about seven seven fossils that are famous and significant in the history of the study of Human Evolution. I was intrelsed in this particular seven and some might be intrelsed in neanderthal. Others might not be quite as familiar like the tilt done hoax or maybe had sedobo a recent discovery. But i pick these seven because i felt like they were different kinds of famous sort of seven different kinds of famous and i thought that would be a really interesting way to accident employer the history of science in the history of human e evolution. So the book is written as seven profiles almost as if i take each of the fossils and turn it into a biography. So the the first chapter is biography of the old man and neanderthal and work our way through the other seven and we can step back and talk about that. In the q and a session and the research in order to in order to get into and be able to put together the the biogs if is of fossils it draws from a lot of different disciplines so definitely history and philosophy of Science Research being able to work in archive of different institutions, looking through reading scientist papers. Their notebook, research and tig this as theyre trying to understand them. And i also ended up using a lot of interviews with with current scientists today. And also spending time looking at poses sills themselves so if these fossils with jennifer was kind enough to bring replica of our discussion today, the old man is neanderthal i felt like if i wanted to o write his story to write his biography i needed to be able to bring together all of these kinds of different sources. So to that id like to share couple of stories with you to kick things off about a favorite fossil that turns the one of jennifers favorite fossils as well. The child from south africa. So this is a copy this is a cap of what the fossil looks like. It is this is life sized so it is definitely a juvenile fossil when the tom baby as it sometimes called dies, it was estimated that it was three years old. And the fossil was found in several parts so we have the first part is this little facial part. So you can see back of it. You can see his little teeth you can see it is very tiny. You have the little tiny mandible important to keep in mind to the story that im going to tell you a tiny mandible here and third part of the fossil that made it so interesting is this is actually a fossilized brain from the child. The poses siling was found in 1923, excuse me 19 the 24, and at that had point it was a fossil that completely changed ow scientist thought about human origin and Human Evolution so with with that in mind youve got sort of the tom child up here, to set the mood. Id like to share a couple of quick stories here if the tom child. The the first time i ever met a celebrity was on a june winter morning in johan necessary book in northern south alaska as part of the museum, summer curriculum we attended lecture, girch by disclosed scientist professor phillip for his talk professor had pulled out well known from the universities fossil vault on wooden trays showing them off like rare are gems awaiting as we file in to take our seats. As students we had all seen so kat like these of these fossils before, but here we were going to get to see the real thing. But tobias was a thin man with a carefully combed white hair, and a meticulously knotted tie. Modest 54 i felt i towered over him and hes in a Laboratory Coat with a small wooden box he began his lecture by describing several south africa well known fossil or human ancestors, picking one of the specimen inintrongt of him and pointing out a characterize like what we just did here. Pointing out a characterize of the bone and then carefully putting fossil back on its tray. The man exuded, and scientific, the fossils we were log at represented decades of research and epitomize crucial role that south africa place in understanding human revolution as stories about different fossils today it was obvious that professor tobias. Given this lecture many times before but we had never seen and it we were in trance. But the specimen that everyone was particularly into was the tom child. A fossil whose history loomed larger than life in the field of paleo anthropology and professor tobias worked to the end of the table with a twinkle in his eye he pulled it a little bit closer or. Drawing out the anticipation he finally opened the box the theatrical threar. He pulled out the tiny cranium, and the little tine mandible. Pieces were small, graph and easily fit into hiswettered hands and said box was the same by raymond used to store fossil at the university for decades. After rerecounting the story in the academic advisory found fossil in a box from the line mark mine he put fossil pieces together so that lower jaw rested under tiny face. Fossil stared at us kind of like this sizing up our group. Professor tobias moved a little mandible up and down clickings to sills tiny teeth together. And launched into a well rehearsed comedy act of sorts. It has a tom child telling a few jokes, with commenting on the weather offer aing some insight about early days of paleo anthropology. This was met with stunned shocked silence. Surrounded fossil only moments before when tobias described a historic significance now seemed oddly out of place. To earnest undergarages it was like how could someone as respected as professor tobias show something famous as the tom fossil this way. This wasnt the way we were supposed to experience it. This fossil should be in a vault, museum dismay behind glass. Anywhere but auditions as a straight guy so that was my experience meeting the tom child. And id like to jump out to talk a little bit about raymond dart to share one of my favorite story trs the book about the discovery of the fossil so that was me sort of discovering the fossil an seeing the real thing as an undergraduate. And id like to share with you this this story because it is hilarious, and its one as i said definitely within of my favorites. So in january 19 the 24 raymond dart was a Young Australian beginning his career at the university in johanburg to create a medical and agnatny department and two years prier in london after the mentorship of british neurothrough elliot smith. At end of the studies in london made possibly scholarship apply for a newly vacant position. Although dart was rat arer horrified at the prospect of heading to south africa away from the the . Ifng community of london. He successfully applied for position with every intention is of returning to london at some point in the future. When dart arrived at university he began to establish economic curricula as well as the school medical program. One of his more popular classes had had students is out collecting fossils and comparing the specimen they found with bones of other species as a means of identifying their discovery. Dart encouraged students to collect fossil curiosity being used as a paper weight on the Directors Desk at the and could say it was a some sort primate and deemer evolutionary. So she asked collector where her professor rt da could take a look at it. Dart assessment of the fossil that it was indeed a very old or extinct species of baboon finding was extremely tremendous for rt da an his students meant that others could be part of the South African fossil record. Interested in human brain, dart was keen to collect specimen that could shed light on early evolution of primate brain and asked to finds fossil with a small reward to any worker who procured interest in specimen. The director of Northern Lime Company mr. Ae sears himself and amateur enthusiast disagreed to stockpile although declined offer on part of his workers which i just found crazy. Thats the director of the works mystery eg is about collecting more interesting fossils from minds thanks to richmond was found that fall. In october of 1974 received a crate a fossil the day he and his wife were to host a wed with dart the best man. Upon o arrival darts wife was less than impressed. In his autobiography dart described her reaction. I suppose those ares to sills youve been expecting. Why on earth did they have to arrive today of all days . Now guests are going to be arriving shortly and you cant delve into that rival until everyone is left. I know but please leave them until tomorrow. Concerns about guests and rt da immediately starts rummaging throughs fossil in full attire and comes across as small priermt brain that stopped him cold. So this is a coif of what dart is finding in that crate in the get up. So enthrappled that Wedding Party had to drag him down to the ceremony where a rather put out groom expectly waited for duties as beg man and recalled these pleasant daydreams were interrupted bit bridegroom himself tugging at my sleeves my god ray he said struggling to keep the city out of his voice you have to address immediately or i have to find another best man, theyll be here any minute. Replace rocks in boxes that i carry and the stone from which he had come along with me and locked them away with me in my wardrobe. In order to remove fossils took several pair of his wife needles to have picks necessary to get the rock away from thes fossil o used ever pair moment to chip away matrix from skull and two days before krems base of a child emerged from the rock. Dart doubted there was any parent prouder of offspring and that christmas of 1924, it was immediately the child raymond fossil, so i wanted to i wanted to share these couple of stories about this fossil. Theyre not just static object in museums that we sort of walk by. But theres things that have stories permingts to that end the certain select that surrounds them so i wanted to put up a couple of pictures yep should have advance to that earlier so this over here, over to the left we do have professor Phillip Tobias doing his demonstration with the tom child not animated but you can use your imagination to picture the little jaw and skull going together there. On the right is the fossil itself, and here we have a set of image it is that i found in my or archive work in johan necessary book so scientist is raymond dart and you can see him in full scientific get up with a starch Laboratory Coat with a microscope, the fourth fourth picture in the series that had is in the book smoking the pipe so it is sort of this character of a scientist, and hes dart is very much trying to sort of present himself as this as this very eminent scientist. And hes eminent scientist his fossil is important so it has creating this whole visual picture that i thought was really interesting. This is a photo of the box so when i was talking about tobias sort of ohming up the box all of that kind of good stuff. That is the box itself. It actually has its own catalog and museum number. Right next to the fossil it is the only piece of sort of cultural artifact or cultural that is part of the or fossil involved at the university and you can see that three parts that are sorts of in there in the little foam of the tom child fossil. But the tom child is one of seven that i wrote about that i researched. And so i wanted o diswrows just quickly throw out other six so you can see what other fossil kind of followed this, pat pattern of celebrity and this does so on upper left this is the tote down fossil a couple of pieces of craneia mandible fragment for 40 years considered most important fossil in angt anthropology and discovered it is not really a fossil or real thing. And it is now the loggest perpetrated hoax in the entire history of science. And im not sure quite if theyll take a bow about that or not but it is longest perpetrated hoax. Over here we have a fossil from china, it was discovered in the 1930s. It was discovered in the late 1920s excavated copied in the 1930s. And then when beijing or invaded fossils were shipped the for fear of being destroyed when fossils were shipped out disappeared never been seen again so this falcon kind of film take on missings to sill an what that means in the history of science. Over here, we have the old man of lashpel a copy of it up here so definitely afterwards feel free to kind of produce produce we have a copy up here. And a i was interested in researching about the old man of lashpel because neanderthal carry in so much character. They carry so much culture and we were sort of with the question if i kale you neanderthal such a negative conotation but these are really sophisticated this is a really sophisticated species. So how does that change . And so that was part of what wanted to research about the old man of lashpe i see we have lucy over here. The tom child that we talked about and back there on the cover of Science Magazine, so she was discovered in 2008 in south africa by a professor lee burger actually his son tripped over fossil. Which is another great origin story for a fossil, and so hes been on cover of Science Magazine three times which is unrepeated in any discipline any scientific dispin no one and no scientist has had their research on the coffer of science more than lee burger has with fossil. And so i was interested in exploring this fossil how does it this is a fossil that came of age in social media it has its own twitter handle. It has its, you know, publicity marketing and sort of well what does that mean for our fossil to be famousesome does that take up just to throw out how absolutely permeating oh, i forgot the seventh one there. Have flow or [inaudible conversations] also known as hobbit popularly e i see lots of folks nodding thats awesome. So three kinds of people and low and behold theres a short sort of threefoot tall hobbity looking fossil that comes out of indonesia so i found that it was this really interesting mix of science meeting Popular Culture almost, almost simultaneously. We also have 2001, odyssey a tshirt with lucy print on it that says i love lucy. Im not ashamed to admit that i have this tshirt i wear this tshirt. [laughter] we have as i said 2001, we have for fire for colt classics there are complengt. Okay. We definitely have some neanderthal enthusiast that was fantastic i had to convince my husband to watch quest for fire with me and i think he was done with the movie when we were done with that holy cow. [laughter] so lots of way withs they pop up for pop culture favorite one is hawaii 50 wide ties still to dialogue the qhoat 9 yards with that. They actually run an episode looking for missing fossil from china so again i sort of have this as sort of humorous, funny but to also show is that . Oisk San Francisco discovery and what we take away from science really permeates in a lot of ways Popular Culture. So maybe we should talk about celebrity science and definitely we have time to keep your questions and if i hope you guys have lots of questions about famous fossils all of that good stuff. I wanted to start out by talking a little bit about science and idea that things are always object i have in science and one of the things that your book highlights is that science is actually very subjective and in a very human endeavor so i was wonder if you can talk a little bit about how the identity of some of these fossils is driven by the subjectivity of the discoveriers and folks that are ploaght these fossils. I think that thats oneofthe things as you point out that really i feel like permeates the book is sort of look at the social process of science. That science, you know, is whether were sort of trying to learn how old the fossil is. What it what kind of environment it lived it in all of these things are very much done in sort of this social context these are scientist, graduate students an people going about the business of doing that and their decisions and thats having efnghts effects on how fossils are understood and how theyre received and as you say sort of shape the the social context for them. One of the things that was most interesting for me to find out about this sort of relationship between science and celebrity was when i was researching the fossil lucy which is one of the most well known fossils, and i found out that actually three weeks after lucy was discovered less than three weeks after lucy was discovered that discoverier dr. Donald held First Press Conference to introduce this amazing fossil i had no idea that that soon after the fossil was discovered that there was this sort of wanting to appeal to 79s to appeal to sort of public audiences that this was a fossil to be great at that point lucy gets her name and introduced to the general public. And