Book Excerpt from The Real Planet of the Apes

In Chapter 7, “West Side Story: The African Apes of Europe,” author David Begun describes the thrill of excavating ancient European primates.

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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, OCTOBER 2015Luck and Hard Work

Summer in Sabadell, Catalonia, northern Spain, is hot and muggy, despite the proximity of the sea and the mountains; 1991 was no exception. The struggling air conditioner in the lab of my colleague Salvador Moyà-Solà’s seemed to be generating more heat than cool air, and my six-year-old son André was reaching his breaking point. So we decided to go visit the site, Can Llobateres, a few kilometers out of town.

I parked on the side of the road and we got out to have a look around. We had to cross a flat, barren area between the road and the outcrops where the fossils are found, which André did with considerable hesitation, because it was used by local people as a garbage dump. With some ...

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