Was that because of the physical beauty, the scientific intrigue, or something else?

"Definitely the science. We all loved the cave. I could talk a lot about what being in the cave meant to us. That was really special. But we were there for a particular reason. We were in that particular spot for a reason. "It’s hard to describe sometimes to folks who don’t necessarily do things that require this type of concentration in their work. You would get focused on excavating a bone and hours would just fly by. I have memories of excavating an element like this one mandible that I spent all morning excavating. You’re just picking away and picking away and trying to expose this and to safely remove it and you blink and it’s been two hours and somebody’s telling you 'You need to eat. You need to drink water.' But it’s just so easy to get lost in what you’re doing. "When we first started, we didn’t know how safe this environment was in terms of the fossils. It was the start of the rainy season in South Africa and we didn’t know if we might have water that started moving into the cave, so we were really focused on just working as hard as we could and trying to remove some of the most important elements as quickly as we could to protect them.” What did the cave mean to you?

"We all developed our own special relationship with the cave. For a lot of people, I think it could be a foreboding environment and something they felt nervous about going into, being in such a confined space. This is partly due to my background and growing up caving, but also I think it definitely has to do with the work that we were doing down in there and just developing a special relationship with the cave — you almost feel like you're going into the Earth. "Some people have described it as entering the womb of the Earth and trying to retrieve this part of the Earth’s history. At times, it felt very comforting to just be inside the cave and to feel the walls around you. It was a really special experience." What is something that you want the world to know about Homo naledi?

"It’s really an example of a new species in our genus, in our lineage, and it’s really going to tell us a lot about our origins, potentially, and what other hominins evolved within our own genus. It’s this really unique combination of traits that we’ve never really seen before all in one specimen. "The really amazing thing about Homo naledi is that we have so many individuals. We have this large span of ages of individuals from quite young — infants — to older individuals who were close to the end of their lives. That’s just so unique in anthropology. As a whole, this assemblage is a really incredible opportunity for paleoanthropology to learn so much more about where we came from. It's an incredible opportunity to just sort of fill in some of these questions about who we are and how we came to be the way that we are." Editor's note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.