the Jane Goodall Institute

One extraordinary change at Gombe - I am sitting in the house on the beach where Grub grew up waiting to send a skyped message to the UK in commemoration of the 50th anniversary. When I arrived there was no faxing, no emailing - certainly no Skyping! Only telegrams if you wanted to communicate fast - and from here they took at least several days to a week. Letters took two to three weeks to get the UK, even by airmail.

A fossil discovery described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is inconsistent with common notions that our direct evolutionary ancestors looked more like chimpanzees or gorillas than humans.

Like the famous "Lucy," this fossil, dubbed "Big Man," is Australopithecus afarensis, a bipedal primate and direct ancestor of humans. Big Man stood about 5'5," had legs that would have been good for running, and had a rib cage similar to our own. He was much taller than Lucy.