Spinal bones of an extinct human relative have been found in lumps of rock blasted out of a South African cave and used to reconstruct one of the most complete back fossils of any hominin. The spine ...

Fossils found at the Sterkfontein Caves in South Africa reveal nearly four million years of hominin and environmental evolution. The Sterkfontein Cave has become famous for the hundreds of ...

Fossils of our earliest ancestors in the "cradle of humankind" are a million years older than previously thought, according to new research. The Sterkfontein Caves in Johannesburg, South Africa, ...

The five kilometres of passages and chambers in the Sterkfontein Cave system northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, have yielded about 800 Australopithecus specimens in the past 90 years. They are ...

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The high-security fossil vault at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), in Johannesburg, contains treasure more precious than the gold that paid for the university’s establishment. It is the ...

Fifty years ago, a remarkable fossil was unearthed in the Afar Rift Valley of Ethiopia, forever transforming our understanding of human evolution. Uncovered by a young paleoanthropologist, Donald ...

The recovery of new lumbar vertebrae from the lower back of a single individual of the human relative, Australopithecus sediba, and portions of other vertebrae of the same female from Malapa, South ...

The ape-like human ancestor Australopithecus—perhaps best known from the iconic fossil ‘Lucy’—might not have had much meat on its menu. After examining more than 3.3-million-year-old remains from ...