I'm amazed that we are still finding new fossils all the time. What is the story usually like of how this happens? Farmer digs a hole for a fencepost, finds a weird skull, calls 1-800-ANTHROPOLOGIST? I'm being flippant but I'm genuinely curious how fossils like this continue to be discovered.
My father was a paleontologist, albeit 30 years ago. I think what is happening with human fossils is that we have/are reaching a critical mass of knowledge that allows us to pinpoint with greater accuracy where to look. The thing starts to become self-perpetuating.
For fossils in general, there are more of us physically wandering on the surface of the planet, and we collectively are more familiar with what is a fossil, which leads to more discoveries.
As well, due to machinery such as excavators and tunnel diggers, we are digging in places we haven't dug before, either deeper or in hard-to-access rocks.
The big unexplored areas is (1) beneath the deserts, especially the Sahara, and (2) under the shallow seas.
This is entirely unrelated, but a cool story nonetheless (too bad the details elude me, I will make them up): There was a big archaeological site discovered in an island in Africa, and archaeologists needed to search a large area for findings. They asked locals to help, and paid them for every piece of ancient artifact they would find and bring back.
The locals started smashing large ancient vases and statues they found into small pieces to get paid more.
You always have to be careful about what you incentivize. There are similar classic stories about bounties on cobras and rats which resulted in breeding more cobras and snakes:
