Good afternoon, were going to go to head get started we would like to welcome you to the skeleton in the closet decision im president Trinity University here in san antonio and this is my colleague lidia pine and we want to first of all, say thank you for coming to the session, and we want to thank the San Antonio Public Library as well as Southwest School of arts and craft ares for opening up their facilities for this great event today, and we are also supposed to encourage everybody to please post any of your photos were your tweets and things please put them up on social media. And use the hashtag hrveg sa book fest civil for twitter so please put those out there out into the internet i should say. I would first of all like to ask everybody to please silence your cell phone if you havent done that please put those off and informed us that flash photography is not permit masters degree the room. The way that the seventh going to work today is is that im goinged to a brief introduction of lidia, shes going to give about a 15minute presentation on her work for short read frustration the book, im then going to ask her a few followup questions, and we will have some time at the end for audience members to ask questions of the author. And then i also want to let you know that she will be signing books in the barnes noble tent immediately following the event. So if you would like to get a signed copy, and i believe oh, yes. One of the fossils that were going to talk about today is the cast of him up here but at the book signing tent if you would like a 3d precinct of the fossil i do have those to hands out so definitely stop by and pick up your copy of the tong child of today. So let me introduce lidia pine shes is a writer, and historian who is interested in the history of science in the history of the material culture. She got an undergraduate degree in anthropology and history from the Arizona State university sorry [laughter] and also received a ph. D. In history at asu as well. She has done after kiefl work and field work around the world including the american southwest. South africa, ethiopia, uzbekistan and iran and she currently lives in austin where she has a position as a visiting fellow at the institute for historical studies at austin. Seven skeletons i highly recommend a very readable bock and brings to light the celebrity of poses fossil is her third book and appeared in places like atlantic, appendix and public do main review to please join me in welcomes lidia pine. [applause] thank you, and thank you all for coming i know this is the last session for the san antonio book festival so i really appreciate you guys taking the time to cool out and talk fossils and history of science im really excited. Im really excited to spend time here to talk about evolution of the world most famous fossils my latest book here to also talk about the nature of select science. How do scientific discoveries become famous . Why do certain scientific discoveries become famous and others dont . These were the questions those both 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, the famous fossil. But why do we know about those instead of other thing it is that did just as much for the . Usk community . Were able to forward scientific ideas all of those sorts of things so thats really what sort of underscored my interest in writing a book like seven skeletons. Which brings us to the point what is seven skell to skeletons about it . It is about seven seven fossils that are famous, significant in the history of the study of Human Evolution. And i was interested in picking these particular seven, some might be well known to people like lucy neanderthals all heard about them. Others might not be quite as familiar like the pilt down hoax and sidibo but i pick these seven because i felt they were different kind of famous seven different kinds of famous and i thought that would be an interesting way to explore the history of science in the history of Human 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 first chapter is a biography of the old man had and neanderthal and work our way through the other seven and we can certainly step become and talk about and talk about that in the q and a session and the research in order to in order to get into and to be able to put together the biographies of fossils it definitely draws from a lot of different disciplines so definitely history and Philosophy Research and archive of different institutions looking through reading scientist papers, their notebook, research, wharm they thinking as theyre excavating these fossils as theyre trying to understand them. I also ends up using, ended up using a lot of interviews with current scientist today, and also spending time looking at the fossils themselves. So if this is my subject of these fossils with jennifer kind enough to bring a replica for our discussion is today so old man is neanderthal, i felt like if i wanted to be able to write his story to write his buying i i immediated to be able to bring together all of these different sources. So to that end i would like to share a couple of stories with you to kick things off about one of my favorites fossils that turns out one of jennifers favorite as well. The tong child from south africa. So this is a copy this is a cap of what the fossil looks like. This is, this is life sized to definitely a juvenile fossil when the tong baby as it sometimes called died,s 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 it is very tiny you have a tiny mandible and story this mandible here, and this third part of the fossil that made it to interesting that it is actually a fossilized brain. From tang child and at that point, it was how they thought about human origin an evolution with that in mind and tong child to set the mood i would like to share stories about the child. First time i ever met a select was on a june winter morning in johannesburg a student at a Northern School in south africa. As part of the museum, part of the summer two paleontology we ended a curriculum given by scientists professor phillip tobias. For his talk, professor tobias had pulled out well known specimen from fossil vault flat atopped red velvet showing them like red gems we filed into the tool take our seat. We would seen cats like these of these fossils before. But here we were going to get to see the real thing. Professor tobias was a thin petite man with carefully combed hair and meticulously tied tie. I felt as if i toured over him. Arrived in a starch Laboratory Coat clutches box he put at one end of the bend and began describing human ancestors picking up one of the specimens in front of him turning over in his hand pointing out and anatomical sort of like we did here with the bone and carefully putting back on the tray. The man exuded and scientific. The fossils we were looking at represented research and epitomize in understanding Human Evolution. As stories different fossils flowed together it was obvious that professor tobias had given a lecture many times before but we had never heard it and we were in trance. But the specimen that everyone was particularly into was the taung child as to history loomed in the history of paleoangt apology and he worked his way down to the old wooden box with a twinkle in his eye he pulled it a little bit closer. Drawing out the anticipation he finally opened the box the theatrical flare. He pulled out the tiny cranium ab and the little tiny mandible. Pieces were small, easily fit into tobiasswetered hand he told us that wooden box was the same one that raymond dart himself had used to store fossil at university for decades. After recounting story of how dart who had been tobias own Academy Advisory found. Tobias put the fossil pieces together so that lower jaw rested under the tiny face. The fossil stared out at us sort of like this professor tobias moved a little mandible up and down crooking the teeth together. And launched into a well rehearsed comedy act of sorts. That has a taung child commenting on the weather offering some insight about early days of paleoanthropology with a great pal raymond dart this was met with with stunned, shocked silence. The renovation that surrounded it only moments before, when tobias described a historic significance now seemed oddly out of place. To us earnest undergraduates it was like how could someone as respected as professor tobias show off a something as famous as the aung fossil this wasnt the way it was supposed to be should be in a museum gley, behind glass, anywhere but auditioning as straight that was my experience heating taung child and a i would like to talk about raymond dart to share one of my favorite stories from the book about the discovery of the fossil so that was me sort of discovering the fossil and seeing the real thing as an undergraduate and id like to share with you this story because it is hilarious and its one that as i said definitely one of my favorites. So in january of 1924, raymond dart was a Young Australian agnat mist beginning career in johannesburg charge haded to create in a department two years prier in london under mentorship of british elliot smith. S at efnedz his studies in london made possible by scholarship, the prom innocent says him to join him in johannesburg and he was horrified heading to south africa away from the Scientific Community of london. He successfully applied for position with every intention of returning to london at some point in the future. When dart arrived he began to establish economic curricula and school medical program. One of his more popular classes had students out collecting fossils, and comparing the specimen they found with bones of other feces as means of identifying their discovery. Dart encouraging students to collect fossil curiosity as a paper weight on the Directors Desk at the inquiry where a friend hers works and he was a primates and guess there was a deeper significance to fossil than that, so she asked whether her profess are could tick a look at it. Assessment of the fossil that it was indeed that it was extinct species of baboon. Findings to primate was exceedingly tremendous for dart and his students because it meant that other primates could be part of the fossil record. One interested in structure and evolution of the human brain, dart was keen to collect specimen that could shed light on early evolution of primate brain. Dart asked to convey very active interest in any fossils discovered at mine and proposed a small financial reward to any worker who procured interest in the specimen. Director of Northern Lime Company mr. Ae sears himself and amateur enthusiast and collector, readily agreed to stockpile the fossil although he denied dart offer for monetary compensation on behalf his workers which i just found crazy flf [laughter] thats the director the lime works e. G. Said about collecting more interesting fossils from are the minds at workman thanks to the region rich limestone geology were plentiful. Sfossils corrected back to dart in johannesburg that fall in october of 1924 dart received a crate of fossils are from the mine day he and his wife were to host a wedding with dart as the best man. Upon arrival of the crate darts wife dora less than impressed. And autothe biography dart rather paternalistically describe the reaction, i suppose those are the poses sills fossils youve been expecting why arrive today of all days. Now raymond guests will will be arriverring short lis you cant wait until everyone has left. I know how important they are or but please leave them until tomorrow. Concerns about guests aside dart starts rummaging through in full attire. He count cross as small fossilized primate brain that stopped him cold. So this is a of what had dart hes finding in the getup the so enfollowed with discovery that Wedding Party had had to more or less drag him down to the ceremony where a rather put out groom expectly waited as best man and rerecalled pleasant daydreams updated by tugging at my sleeve my god ray he said ling to keep it out of his voice you have to address immediately or i have to find another best man and hell be here any minute. We replace rocks in boxes but i carry the stone from which could come with me an lock me away in my wardrobe. In order to remove fossils from the limestone, dart had several pairs of his wife nitting needle and short picks mess to get the rock away from the fossil for the next three months dart used every spare moment to patiently chip away. Two days before christmas emerged from are the rock. Dart wrote i doubted there was any parent prouder of his offspring. Than i was of my taung baby that christmas of 1924 immediately the child. So i wanted to share these couple of stories about this fossil. This taung child fossil because i feel like these are ways that fossils can come to life that theyre not static octobers in museums that we walk by. But there are things that have stories and personalities, and to that end the certain select thats surround them so i wanted to put up a couple of pictures yep. Sorry i should have advanced to that earlier. So this about over here over to the left we do have professor flim tobias doing his demonstration that is not animated but you can use your imagination to picture the jaw and skull going together there. And on the right is just a picture of the taung child fossil itself. Here, we have a set of images that i found in my after kiefl work from the University Run in johan had necessaryburg so the scientist in the pictures is raymond dart you can see him in full scientific getup with his own starched white Laboratory Coat with a microscope, the fourth fourth picture in this series that is in the book smoking a pipe. So it really are 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 since hes eminent scientist his fossil is important and so it sort of creating this whole visual picture that i thought was really interesting. This was a photo of the box so when i was talking about tobias sort of opening up the box and afl that kind of goods 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 cull after artifact that is parf the fossil vault at the university. And you can see the three parts that are sort of nestled there in the foam of the taung child fossil but the child is one of seven that i wrote about and that i research. And so i wanted to just quickly throw out the other six so you could see okay what other fossils kind of followed this pattern of research and celebrity on the upper kind of this side does this have a, yeah it does. So here on the upper left, we have a couple of scrappy pieces this is actually the tilt down fossil. It was a couple of pieces of crane why so skull couple of teeth, mandible fragment and for 40 years it was considered most important fossil in paleoanthropology and scoffed that it is actually a hoax. Not a fossil. Not really not really a real thing. And it is now longest perpetrated hoax in the entire history of science. Im not the sure quite whether paleoanthropology will take a bow about that or not but it is longer perpetrated hoax. Over here, we have a fossil that is the man from are china, it was discovered in the 1930s, it was dismoferred the late 1920s exkated and cast copied in the 19 0u. And then when beijing shipped out for fear of being destroyed and when fossils were shipped out theyve never been seen again so this was sort of a falcon kind of film take on a missing fossil and what that means in the history of science. Over here we have the old man so nee andser that will which is copy of it up here so definitely afterwards free to produce if you want to see what had a nee ander skull look like we have a copy up here, and i was interested in researching about the old man of lash peel because neanderthals care so much in some ways character. They carry so much cultural res res we were talking, and throwing with the question if i call you a nee nee angder that will it is a negative conotation but this s is a sophisticated species how does that change so that was part of what i wanted to research about the old man of lash peel we have lucy. I say a couple of people nodding so it is great we have lucy over here. Taung child and sediba on cover of Science Magazine discovered by professor lee burger actually his son trippedded over fossil but another great origin story for a fossil. And has actually been on the cover of Science Magazines three times which is a feet that is unrepeat inside any discipline no one and no scientist has had their research on the cover of science more than, more than lee burger has with fossil. So i was interested in exploring this fossil how does this this is a fossil that came of age on social media, i mean, its own twitter handle. It has its own publicity marketing and what does that mean for a fossil to be famous . Does that take away from the importance of the Scientific Research does it trivialize it . All of those sorts of things, and to wrap up just just to throw out there, how absolutely permeating oh, i forgot the seventh one there have slowed or [inaudible conversations] also known as the hobbit popularly that is awesome people nodding so that was found when lord of the rings was actually coming out and all of a sudden the world is looking at short hobbity kinds of people, an low and behold theres a short sort of threefoot tall hobbity looking fossil that comes out of indonesia, so i found that was really this sort of interesting mix of science meeting Popular Culture almost simultaneously. We have also 2001 this space odyssey you can get a tshirt when lucy precincted on it saying i love lucy im not ashamed admit that i wear this tshirt. S we have as i said in 2001 the quest for fire for any colt classic oh, slengt. Okay we definitely have some neanderthal enthusiasts thats fantastic that was i had to convince my husband to watch quest for fire with me. I think that he was done with the movie when we were done with that holy cow. So yeah, so there are lots of different ways that these fossils pop up and in pop cult