Gorongosa 2024-FULL-FINAL - Flipbook - Page 74
PA LEO NTO LO GY
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GORONGOSA SP ECIAL
The original owners
of the teeth are far
from human.
Both Carvalho and Bobe joined me via Zoom—Carvalho from her office
at Oxford University, and Bobe from the basement of the London Museum
of Natural History, where he sat in front of a tall bank of metal drawers
containing a few million years’ worth of fossils.
The project Carvalho has overseen at Gorongosa since 2015 incorporates the hardcore digging, sifting, and dusting of paleontology with training and mentoring for a cadre of Mozambiquan students who are pursuing
graduate level studies in the field. Ravaged by a 16-year civil war that ended
in 1992, Gorongosa has since undergone a profound revitalization that has
seen its large animal populations rebound from near-decimation. Thirty
years on from that conflict, the park is bursting with life and is home to as
many as 6,300 different species of plants and animals. Carvalho’s team has
uncovered a rich and strikingly comprehensive testament to what came
before the current flora and fauna—and in the process is seeking to add
another chapter to the story of humanity.
Within that chapter lies not so much an orderly family tree as a wildly
branching bush with roots growing in a swirl from numerous directions.
One key character among the thicket, Bobe tells me, is the elusive last
common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. But Bobe says that any
study of our roots must push deeper into time than that—to a last common ancestor of humans and all other African apes, chimpanzees and
gorillas included.
“There are various ideas about what these ancestors looked like, how
they behaved, what they ate, and how they lived, but nobody knows for
sure because these ancestors have yet to be found,” he says. “These ancestors mark the starting point of our lineage becoming different from other
African primates. Our research aims not just to find these fossil species
of apes but also to document the ecosystems that existed in Africa during
a very important time in the evolution of humans and other mammals.”
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