“Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique has fossil sites that, as recently as 2016, had never been explored. It is here that the Paleo-Primate Project (PPP) studies fossil evidence and living primates to understand human evolution.
In 2017, during the final year of my bachelor’s degree in archaeology and cultural heritage at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, I had the opportunity to work on that project. It was my first encounter with primatology, and it changed the course of my life. Today, I spend most of my time observing grey-footed Chacma baboons (Papio ursinus griseipes) in the park — the best workplace I can imagine.
In this photo, taken in October 2025 in the park’s palaeontology laboratory, I’m holding the skull of the extinct mammal Arsinoitherium, a large herbivore that once lived in Africa’s swampy and coastal regions. The lab is where fossil remains from ongoing excavations are curated. Discoveries such as this suggest that Gorongosa was once part of the coastal forests of East Africa. It might have been a refuge that allowed some species to survive here longer than anywhere else in Africa.
