NAIROBI, KENYA--When Meave Leakey first saw the 3.5-million-year-old human skull, she couldn't help feeling pessimistic. Grass and tree roots had invaded the specimen, and what little of it peeked out through the rocky matrix was riddled with tiny cracks. "It really was a horrible mess," she recalls, an English accent coloring her quiet voice. The veteran paleoanthropologist turns her gray-green gaze from me to the fossil cast sitting on her desk. "I never thought we'd get anything looking as good as this out of it."

   
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