MZANZI TRAVEL - ISSUE 2

found by Ronald Clarke and Phillip Tobias in 1995 (the bones had
lain in a box since the late 1970s, when they were excavated).
Not only has the Cradle of Humankind provided rich heritage of
humankind’s origins, but it recently gave the world a new hominin
species, the two-million-year-old Australopithecus sebida.
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. Clarke went after the rest of Little Foot’s skeleton - and in
1998, amazingly, found it, or at least a significant part of it.
A 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. 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.
According 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. In addition, the preservation of the skeleton is
extraordinary, with most of the bones intact and joined in their natural
position.
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.
According 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 [discovered in 1984 near Lake Turkana in
Kenya].”
The Sterkfontein valley consists of around 40 different fossil sites, 13 of
which have been excavated. 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 area
was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. Although it is on privately
owned land, any finds belong to the world, and the area is strictly
controlled and protected.
MZANZI TRAVEL| www.mzanzitravel.co.za|ISSUE 2 | 13