![]() The area was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. It includes Bolt’s Farm, where the remains of three sabre-tooth cats have been found in a pit that trapped animals Swartkrans, site of the earliest-known deliberate use of fire, around 1.3-million years ago Haasgat, where the fossils of early forest-dwelling monkeys, around 1.3-million years old, were found and Gondolin, where 90 000 fossil specimens have been found since 1979. The Sterkfontein valley consists of around 40 different fossil sites, 13 of which have been excavated. The Little Foot skeleton was originally thought to be between 3 and 3.5 million years old, but a more recent study argues that it could be over 4 million years old, which would make it one of the oldest known australopithecine fossils, and easily the oldest from South Africa.Īccording to Talk.origins: “If Clarke’s expectations of further finds are borne out, Little Foot could become the most spectacular and important hominid fossil ever discovered, rivalled only by the Turkana Boy Homo erectus skeleton. In addition, the preservation of the skeleton is extraordinary, with most of the bones intact and joined in their natural position. Some believe that Little Foot is the most significant hominid find since Raymond Dart’s discovery of the skull of the Taung child, a juvenile Australopithecus africanus, discovered in 1924 near a town called Taung in the far north of North West.Īccording to Clarke, the Little Foot fossil has yielded the most complete australopithecine skull yet found, found together with the most complete set of foot and leg bones known so far – with more extracted from the rock since then. Maropeng brings fossils to life with interactive displays, stunning exhibits and a boat ride on an underground lake, the state-of-the-art Maropeng centre allows visitors to explore the rich fossil heritage of the Cradle of Humankind.Ī complete skull and fragments of arm, foot and leg bones have been uncovered so far the rest of the bones are still being painstakingly excavated from the rock. ![]() Clarke went after the rest of Little Foot’s skeleton – and in 1998, amazingly, found it, or at least a significant part of it. In 1997, Clarke, digging through more boxes of bones from Sterkfontein, found more footbones from the same individual – one with a clean break suggesting that more of Little Foot’s bones might still be inside the cave. Professor Lee Berger, the American archaeologist who led the excavation, called the Rising Star expedition, said fossils of 15 individuals of various ages were found 12 metres into the Dinaledi Chamber. It was described as a new branch of the human family tree. A new species of hominin, homo naledi, was unveiled at Maropeng in the Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg in September 2015.Little Foot, an almost complete ape-man skeleton that could be just over 4 million years old, the first pieces – footbones – of which were found by Ronald Clarke and Phillip Tobias in 1995 (the bones had lain in a box since the late 1970s, when they were excavated). ![]()
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