A team led by Professor Lee Berger, a renowned palaeoanthropologist from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (aka Wits University) has described and named a new species of hominid, Australopithecus sediba, almost two million years old, which was discovered in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, 40 kilometres out of Johannesburg, South Africa.   “Sediba, [...]

 Chris Thurman enagaged in conversation with Prof Philip Tobias world-renowned paleo-anthroplogist at the Boekehuis this Saturday.  In addition to his ground breaking work with hominids, Tobias has also been very influential as an anatomist, a geneticist, is an expert on medic-legal ethics and  … is a keen lover of cricket!  With a twinking eye and a razor sharp sense of humour [...]

From Maropeng’s February 2010 newlsetter
On April 10, Maropeng and iHominin will give budding palaeontologists a rare opportunity to explore a 1.5-million-year-old fossil site. Cooper’s Cave, 1.2km from the famous Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg, is a relatively newly discovered fossil site, where several species of animals and a number of stone tools have been found. The [...]

Descending to look at the underground dig

Another great opportunity here in Jozi.  Yesterday, two friends and I visited Swartkrans, near Sterkfontein in the Cradle of  Humankind.   What a wonderful day!  One of South Africa’s 8 World Heritage sites, the Cradle is rich with fossil-bearing cave deposits spread over 13 different sites .  Fossils from several [...]