The Maropeng Visitor Centre recently launched a new walking tour to give amateur paleoanthropologists insight into the exciting fossil record to be found in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site.    The new half-day tour called Bone Detectives is an introduction to human evolution and how fossils provides clues about our ancestors who lived millions [...]

The fossils of Australopithecus sediba are to be exhibited once again at Maropeng,  from September 9 to September 26.   The adult female specimen, MH-2, will feature prominently in a new display called More secrets of sediba revealed, along with other fossils from the Malapa site in the Cradle of Humankind.     There will be tours which will be [...]

The Taung skull – 2/5 million years old and very rarely displayed to the public, was on view at the Life of Bone exhibition which I just caught on the closing day last Tuesday 31st May.  I had seen the tiny skull of the 3 year old displayed in its 3 parts  at one if [...]

I blogged on the tours to Swartkrans in the Cradle of humankind  http://lizatlancaster.co.za/blog/cradle-of-humankind-fascinating-tour-of-our-originsn but now there are opportunties to visit Cooper’s Cave, a relatively new excavation site in the Cradle of Humankind, with Wits University palaeoanthropologist Christine Steininger. For R350 per person, including lunch, you get to explore the cave, interact with Christine while she explains fossils and the site, [...]

11th sept: Visit Cooper’s Cave situated 1.2km from the famous Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg,  a relatively new excavation site where several species of animals and a number of stone tools have been found. Activities on offer for the morning include an interactive fossil and site talk, cave exploration and fossil finding, and an opportunity to [...]

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 [...]