The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

We toured the Sterkfontein Caves where important australopithecine fossils were found.

They swung through the trees above and fell through holes like this and died.

There are still active excavations going on, but we weren’t allowed to visit those parts.

Which meant it was a tour of a fairly typical cave.

Dark and wet.

And difficult to get around.

There are also some open excavations at the surface.

Here’s Homo naledi. H. naledi is the newly discovered hominid from South Africa.

The reason we have such a huge collection so soon after discovery is that they found the bones at the back of a very hard to access cave system. This may be the earliest form of burial behaviour because the shape of the cave makes it unlikely that it was used for living. Most bones are quite damaged due to crushing from the sheer number clustered together.

We were lucky to catch it on it’s first public showing on its last day before heading off to another location.

Their former prize fossil, a young Australopithecus sediba, had been hastily shoved into a corner to make space for the newcomer.

This is a cast of him standing up.

This is an assembled skull. It’s a little smaller but looks very similar to our skulls, except that it looks like it’s wearing glasses. Not big glasses like Homo erectus though.

When looking at the foot structure the other hominids are smaller and the bones are at different angles suggesting different walking gaits.

We stood in the long line twice to see it because we only had 10 minutes each time to see this remarkable collection.

Here’s Homo naledi. H. naledi is the newly discovered hominid from South Africa.

The reason we have such a huge collection so soon after discovery is that they found the bones at the back of a very hard to access cave system. This may be the earliest form of burial behaviour because the shape of the cave makes it unlikely that it was used for living. Most bones are quite damaged due to crushing from the sheer number clustered together.

We were lucky to catch it on it’s first public showing on its last day before heading off to another location.

Their former prize fossil, a young Australopithecus sediba, had been hastily shoved into a corner to make space for the newcomer.

This is a cast of him standing up.

This is an assembled skull. It’s a little smaller but looks very similar to our skulls, except that it looks like it’s wearing glasses. Not big glasses like Homo erectus though.

When looking at the foot structure the other hominids are smaller and the bones are at different angles suggesting different walking gaits.

We stood in the long line twice to see it because we only had 10 minutes each time to see this remarkable collection.