October 26, 2006
By Ndaba Dlamini
IN 1997 a professor of palaeoanthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand took us a step closer to understanding our ancestry with the unearthing of a complete adult skeleton of a hominid, a possible direct ancestor of human beings, in the Sterkfontein Cave.
Professor Ron Clarke made known the progress he has made on his discovery of the first known Australopithecus skeleton, known as Little Foot at a public lecture, Out of the Lime Quarry into the Lime Light, at the university on Tuesday, 24 October.
Hundreds of people, all eager to get an insight into their origins, attended the lecture, where Wits vice-chancellor Loyiso Nongxa said South Africa had a remarkable fossil heritage. "President Thabo Mbeki once described the country as a 'palaeontological storehouse' and today marks the day when Professor Clarke reveals his extraordinary work of the past year."
Little Foot is the first known complete Australopithecus skeleton to be discovered
Opening his lecture to much applause, Clarke said the story of Little Foot was the story of Africa. It started more than 3,5 million years ago when "one of our ancestors fell into a deep shaft".
"This was a time when little hominids just over a metre tall lived in an environment full of dangerous carnivores such that they took refugee in trees. How Little Foot came to fall into the deep shaft of the Sterkfontein Cave is up to speculation. He might have been thrown down or inadvertently fell in – we will probably never know."
As the cave into which Little Foot fell was dolomite, he was preserved for millions of years in a stalagmite which eventually formed into a pillar. It wasn't until Clarke, rummaging through a box of bones stored at Wits labelled as primate relics, from chunks of fossil-bearing breccia blasted out by limestone miners in the 1920s, found little bones of two feet, one left, one right.
Clarke said he went into the Sterkfontein Cave, located within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, determined to find the rest of the bones so that he would have a complete skeleton. First to be discovered were the legs and the pelvis, then the outstretched right arm, collarbone and skull.
Unearthing the skeleton has been painstaking and slow. The working conditions in the cave are "very difficult" with Clarke and his assistants using pens with vibrating points as their only tools to remove the skeleton from the dark depths.
The historic find is unique and adding to its importance is the fact that many elements of the find are themselves unique. "The short arm of Little Foot dismisses the notion that humans gradually developed to walk upright. After all the parts of Little Foot have been excavated will we know exactly how tall the hominid was," Clarke said.
It has been some years since Little Foot, a name given to the skeleton by Wits scientist Professor Philip Tobias, was discovered, and it would take more years to uncover the whole skeleton. Turning to the gender of Little Foot, Clarke said it was difficult to tell because the pelvis is crushed. "But it is most likely a male because of the masculine nature of the bones."
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