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The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins

The long read: When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not everyone was convinced – and the bitter argument that followed has consumed the lives of scholars ever since

The palaeontology group in Poitiers was organised to an unusual degree around Brunet, its director; he had a tendency to treat the other scientists as if they were his vassals, as mere “service providers”, Otero said, expecting them to conduct research that furthered his own work, and refusing to sign off on projects that did not. Based largely upon the bone’s apparent forward curvature – in Homo sapiens, the femur is effectively straight – and what little they could glean of its internal structure from Bergeret’s photos, the authors concluded that it had probably belonged to a quadrupedal, non-hominin ape. It would have been a flat-faced, small-brained creature about the size of a human child or small chimpanzee, perhaps scampering into the trees when a saber-toothed cat came round, perhaps hanging on branches, perhaps sleeping in nests as modern apes do, and presumably moving about much of the rest of the time on the ground, where it walked on two feet.

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