Channel 4 To Broadcast Documentary Revealing New Species Of Human Ancestor

Channel 4 will broadcast a documentary following the archeological investigation which discovered a new species of human ancestor.

First Humans: The Cave Discovery, will be broadcast on 27 September.
The documentary follows the expedition of an international team of experts, led by Professor Lee Berger from the University of Witwatersrand, as they recover bone fragments from a deep and nearly inaccessible cave in South Africa.

The remains were first discovered by two cavers in 2013. After the fossils were excavated, scientists conducted extensive analysis of the more than 1,500 bone fragments recovered from the cave. They discovered evidence of a new human ancestor that they have named Homo naledi.

The programme documents what may be one of the greatest fossil finds of our time, filling in a mysterious gap in the fossil record of our evolution - the crucial transition from the ape-like Australopithecus to the first members of our own genus, Homo, the first humans.

The one hour National Geographic documentary has been acquired by Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for History, Rob Coldstream. He says: "I'm tremendously excited about this sensational story which is rewriting the story of our human origins and shedding remarkable new light on what is arguably the most important episode in our evolution, but until now it has been the least understood."

The finds are described in two papers published in the scientific journal eLife and reported in National Geographic magazine.

First Humans: The Cave Discovery will broadcast on 27 September at 7pm.