South African Fossil Digger Becomes Paleontology Curator

After high school in South Africa, Lazarus Kgasi needed work fast to help support his seven siblings. In 2000, he took a random job digging for fossils in the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage site near Pretoria.

For two years, Kgasi just dug. He had no idea he was unearthing proof that Africa was the birthplace of humanity.

He was joining a long line of Black laborers who extracted fossils for white researchers who took all the credit. This practice started during apartheid and continued even after it ended in 1994.

But Kgasi got curious. He started asking the American and European researchers what these ancient bones meant.

Some of them saw something special in him and started teaching him. They treated him as an equal and shared their knowledge freely.

"That's where everything started lifting off for me," says Kgasi, now 52.

The researchers gave him more responsibility. He began identifying fossils before handing them over and eventually managed other excavators at the university.

Today, Kgasi is a junior curator at the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, conducting his own research. He's discovered the first fossil snake fang found in the Cradle of Humankind, along with bones from ancient frogs, monkeys, and birds.

His work focuses on the animals that lived alongside early humans. Understanding the full ecosystem helps paint a complete picture of how our ancestors lived.

"With the hominids only, we cannot paint that picture," he explains. "You need the whole zoo."

Why This Inspires

Kgasi stands at a fossil site where he hears the voices of human ancestors. As a descendant of those who stayed in Africa, he says his darker skin adapted to the harsh African sun over millions of years.

For decades, Black fossil diggers were erased from scientific papers despite doing the groundwork. Their contributions were deliberately hidden to maintain control during and after apartheid.

Now Kgasi is one of the people writing the research articles. He's reclaiming the story of human origins for the continent and people where it all began.

His journey from random laborer to respected scientist shows what becomes possible when knowledge gets shared instead of hoarded. Every fossil he identifies helps tell the story of where we all came from.