We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man.

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

Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance.

For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.

In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the short term.

Echoing the criticism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of plaster of Paris', thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to.

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.