So yes, despite the misleading title these priceless remains of our shared hominid heritage made it back, safe in the pocket of an arrogant billionaire.
But why even risk it in the first place? There's absolutely no reward and some risk. That's dumb.
Moreover, this stunt is part of a disturbing trend of scientifically questionable promotion from Lee Burger, who was already a big name within archeology after finding Sediba and now on his way to wider celebrity since Naledi.
Homo Naledi is incredible in almost every regard - location, dates, preservation, number of individuals, morphology. It's nuts.
But recently Burger has been doing things like putting out press releases before peer review, timing them to boost his Netflix show. The latest claims of fire, tools and abstract carved symbols ended up failing peer review but were published anyway. They are full of tests not done, obvious hypotheses not considered, specialists not consulted, numbers that didn't replicate and some weirdly partially obscured images. But he's still out there, getting his conclusions into the public consciousness when they are not scientifically verified.
Yet another publicity stunt with no scientific merit is sure to piss off archeologists.