Travis Pickering, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who helped discover, identify, and describe the fossil, says he was “ecstatic” when he saw the bones.
“A find like this, in this context — that is, millions of years old and from a cave, which is extremely dynamic in terms of things like the build-up sediment, rockfall from the roof, the activities of prehistoric animals that dwelled in it, including eating and chewing bone — is as rare as finding hen’s teeth,” he says. “I couldn’t be happier.”