photographist

“I remember a time when, as a little girl, I was collecting small pebbles, tiny fossils, in my parents‘garden. But I wanted to know more about them, and this is why I joined a scientific club and I devoured all the books of Tazieff on volcanoes, Casteret on caves, mountains... All these things fascinated me and led me towards a training of paleontological geologist ... 
A fossil collected out of its context does not bear a lot of interest. The fossil lived in a specific place with other animals, and plants. It is not only the fossil which is interesting, but also its environments, the modes of sedimentation, the way it gets preserved. This is an entire and complex system which evolves: biodiversity along with geodiversity.
As a palaeontologist, I was also interested to understand how the modes of locomotion emerged, and in particular how we became bipedal.

Orrorin is one of these early potential ancestors of our lineage. Found in 6 million years old sediments in the Tugen Hills (Kenya), it represents the first clear evidence of bipedalism (close to ours) as shown in its bones. Its name comes from a local legend: in the Tugen community, Orrorin is the name of a mythical original man. 
Another important moment was the discovery of half an upper fossil tooth of a 18 million year old ape in South Africa. I could not believe it! There were few mammals in this place and many diamonds… For the first time, we had a very old great ape in Southern Africa. Then we went further back in time and in 2008 we found primates in 44 million year old sediments in Namibia. Today, we try to obtain a more global approach of evolution of the great apes and the emergence of humans in an environmental and climatic context.”

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