1/8/2023 0 Comments Cradle of humankind![]() Apart from its scientific value, the site has been developed in order to create employment and regional economic development through the use of science, conservation and tourism as economic drivers aimed at alleviating poverty and stimulating the economy of the region. It is an area that has yielded and has continued to produce an enormous amount of information about our human origins. It was established and inscribed in 1999 on UNESCO’s World Heritage List because of the wealth of fossils found in the area and, in particular, fossils of ancient humans. Its mission is to protect, conserve and interpret the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. The team's research has been published in PNAS.The Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site (COHWHS) is one of South Africa’s leading World Heritage Sites as a 53 000 hectare site of global significance, with over 400 accompanying diverse offerings for visitors. "The redating of the Australopithecus-bearing infills at the Sterkfontein Caves will undoubtedly re-ignite the debate over the diverse characteristics of Australopithecus at Sterkfontein, and whether there could have been South African ancestors to later hominins," Granger said. The new result, consistent with the dating of Little Foot, suggests that Homo and Paranthropus – also found in the Cradle of Humankind – emerged nearly a million years after the Member 4 individuals lived, which means the order of events, and where they occurred, can be revised. "Based on previously suggested dates, the South African Australopithecus species were too young to be their ancestors, so it has been considered more likely that Homo and Paranthropus evolved in East Africa." "Younger hominins, including Paranthropus and our genus Homo, appear between about 2.8 and 2 million years ago," said archaeologist Dominic Stratford of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Sterkfontein research coordinator. This has important implications for our understanding of human evolution, and Sterkfontein's place in it, the researchers said. That means the remains recovered from the deposit are all from around the beginning of the Australopithecus era, and not its end as previously thought. "These radioactive isotopes, known as cosmogenic nuclides, are produced by high-energy cosmic ray reactions near the ground surface, and their radioactive decay dates when the rocks were buried in the cave when they fell in the entrance together with the fossils," Granger explained.įrom these isotopes, the team discerned that the Australopithecus-bearing sediments all date from between 3.4 and 3.7 million years ago. Specifically, they probed the radioactive decay of two rare isotopes in quartz: aluminum-26 and beryllium-10. Rather than examining the flowstone, or other bones found nearby (that may not be contemporaneous to the remains in question), the team examined the rock in which the Australopithecus remains were embedded. Since the ages of other deposits are still the topic of hot debate, he and colleagues turned their methods to Member 4. Granger's methods were instrumental in that dating. Previous work on another famous Sterkfontein Australopithecus skeleton, that of the individual named Little Foot, excavated from the infill Member 2, returned an age of 3.67 million years. Ples skull, the most complete example of its kind ever discovered. ![]() ![]() Member 4 previously yielded the famous Mrs. That's exactly what it sounds like: material that filled what was previously a cavity, resulting in a sedimentary deposit in this case, concealing but preserving ancient hominin remains. Most of the Sterkfontein Australopithecus remains have been recovered from a cave infill called Member 4. However, flowstone can form over older sediment, and this seems to have been the case in Sterkfontein. It formed around 2 to 2.5 million years ago. Previous estimates for the complex Sterkfontein system were based on the age of calcite flowstone found within the cave fill.
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