I enjoyed watching the film, and it does provide an informative and provoking look at hominid fossil history, paleoarcheology, etc.
The video left a very misleading impression, however, on conclusions to be drawn from this find. Berger's dating is entirely speculative; apparently he didn't even try carbon dating to see if they were relatively younger (<50K years).
The video states that no fossilized remains other than an owl's were found with the hominin remains. This is not true...micromammal fossils were also found.
And the fact that Berger ran away from well-established journals like Science and Nature (which had apparently questioned some of his research or conclusions) and decided to opt for a relatively obscure journal "eLife" raises questions about how concerned he was about accuracy/scientific integrity as opposed to rushing his "find" to some kind of publication.
I know this video is meant to basically tell the story from Berger's perspective. But those drawing many conclusions from it without more information would be premature.
The video left a very misleading impression, however, on conclusions to be drawn from this find. Berger's dating is entirely speculative; apparently he didn't even try carbon dating to see if they were relatively younger (<50K years).
The video states that no fossilized remains other than an owl's were found with the hominin remains. This is not true...micromammal fossils were also found.
And the fact that Berger ran away from well-established journals like Science and Nature (which had apparently questioned some of his research or conclusions) and decided to opt for a relatively obscure journal "eLife" raises questions about how concerned he was about accuracy/scientific integrity as opposed to rushing his "find" to some kind of publication.
I know this video is meant to basically tell the story from Berger's perspective. But those drawing many conclusions from it without more information would be premature.
