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The galleries of the National Museum of Natural History are filled to the brim with fossils.
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July 2001, Paris
One of the world's great centers of paleontology, Paris' National Museum of Natural History, is home to Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut. This historic building, which holds galleries of dinosaurs, whales, and human ancestors, is a filmmaker's delight.
Entering Martin and Brigitte's small offices we encounter shelves crammed with hominid skulls, femurs, elephant bones, and other fossils of intrigue. It's a great setting for Martin and Brigitte, who are also natural stars on camera. They love to explain their theories about the mechanisms of human evolution in ways that are easy to understand.
With casts of bones of chimps, early and modern humans, Martin takes us, step-by-step, through how we can interpret the very grooves, the bumps, the details that can make a discovery important to our understanding of the origins of early man.
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Members of our film crew prepare for a shoot in Martin Pickford's office.
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Brigitte outlines their claims about Orrorin being our earliest ancestor. It is incredible to hear so much based on the tiniest of details in a handful of bones. But when you have spent time with paleontologists like we now have, that is nothing new.
They talk of the controversy that Orrorin has created and Brigitte laughs as she says that if she ever finds a skull from six million years ago again, she will bury it once more in the ground.
Back in the galleries, the crew are using cranes and special camera technology to engineer a visual feast of skeletons and creatures. It couldn't be a better place to discover even more about the origins of humankind.
- Lucy McDowell
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