For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment.

Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task.

The problem of the apes is not a shortage of money, it is a shortage of strategy. Let us devote our minds... the one thing we have more of than other apes... and let's secure their future.

The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.

It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads.

Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place.

To have arrived on this earth as a product of a biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony.