Let's get to teeth.
An anthropologist from EU as part of a
team that made a miraculous discovery.
Adding a new piece of evidence to
one of science's biggest questions.
How did we, human beings, get here?
Chris Haraszti is, of course,
the man for this story geeking
out on it all day.
Would you find out Chris
all day, all day? Listen every
now and then you get a science
fair that comes along and you go.
Wow, that's cool.
This is one of those stories.
The discovery of a little
girl's tooth in a cave in Laos.
That girl closer to human
than ape is estimated to have
lived 150,000 years ago.
Modern humans, us Homo sapiens,
are estimated to be 150,000
to 315,000 years old,
but millions of years before us and
even in our early years there was
another kind or kinds of us predecessors
ancestors that we know very little about.
Would you say this is a major puzzle
piece in the puzzle of human evolution?
Doctor Ali Zaphia,
a biological anthropologist with
EU of M medical school in Duluth,
was part of a team that
made a sizable leap forward.
I'm not sure if it's we just got
extremely lucky or if all of the
mountains around here like that.
The adventure started four years
ago here inside this tropical
mountain in Laos called Cobra Cave.
Can't make this up.
Local **** Boy came and told our field
team that he has seen some bones.
In The Cave we were like, great,
let's go check it out right.
A colleague saw what appeared to be
teeth inside a hardened cave wall.
He plucked them out and brought him to the
team. And when he pulled him out,
this tooth was one of those teeth and all
of us who are paleoanthropologists just.
Lost it, we were like Oh my God like this is
huge and it was after years
of researching the discovery,
the team concluded in a brand new
article this week that the tooth
is the molar of a female who was
roughly four to six years old.
The girl's not human but almost human
between 164,000 and
131,000 years old. So old.
Found what they believe only the third
fossil ever proving the existence of
a human predecessor called Denisovan.
A cousin species to Neanderthals.
There's a tooth and a finger bone from
the original cave in Siberia, and there's
a mandible from the Tibetan Plateau.
And there's this tooth and that's it.
She says. This discovery proves that
this ancient species was adaptable.
It lived and thrived not only in
frigid Siberia and the mountainous
cold of Tibet. But the hot,
muggy jungles of Southeast Asia,
it's one of the greatest questions we have.
Where did we come from?
Whom did we come from?
Agreed, it was a childhood dream of mine
to do this work and I'm really lucky and
happy that I've gotten to do it and to
do it with such a really wonderful kind.
Amazing group of researchers.
I think the reason this is so exciting
is because it tells us that there is so
much more we don't know and there's so
much more waiting for us to discover.
Maybe in, you know, on the next mountain,
the one right next to it. You know?
Amazing Doctor Zofia says she
absolutely can't wait to go back and
keep digging in that same location,
but she said something else
that was super interesting.
She and other experts think that
there might actually be other teeth
and bones from Denisovan species.
Sitting right inside museums.
Right now, they just never had the
knowledge and technology to classify them.
So lots of work still to do.
Based off this remarkable discovery.
You know it's so interesting to
me and I love hearing people
like that that are brilliant.
In doing this work,
say there's so much more we
don't know and are excited
about, that everything that
we discover and learn.
You realize more that you
know even less, right?
Isn't that what these
great discoveries show us
that that and parenthood? Yes, absolutely.
Welcome to the club my friend.