A new absolute date from Swartkrans Cave for the oldest occurrences of Paranthropus robustus and Oldowan stone tools in South Africa.

The Early Pleistocene site of Swartkrans in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site has been significant for our understanding of the evolution of both early Homo and Paranthropus, as well as the earliest archaeology of southern Africa. Previous attempts to improve a faunal age estimate of the earliest deposit, Member 1, had produced results obtained with uranium-lead dating (U-Pb) on flowstones and cosmogenic burial dating of quartz, which placed the entire member in the range of >1.7/1.

The pectoral girdle of StW 573 ('Little Foot') and its implications for shoulder evolution in the Hominina.

The ca. 3.67 Ma adult skeleton known as 'Little Foot' (StW 573), recovered from Sterkfontein Member 2 breccia in the Silberberg Grotto, is remarkable for its morphology and completeness.

The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism.

Functional morphology of the atlas reflects multiple aspects of an organism's biology. More specifically, its shape indicates patterns of head mobility, while the size of its vascular foramina reflects blood flow to the brain. Anatomy and function of the early hominin atlas, and thus, its evolutionary history, are poorly documented because of a paucity of fossilized material.

Cortical bone distribution in the femoral neck of Paranthropus robustus.

Studies of the australopith (Australopithecus and Paranthropus) proximal femur have increasingly integrated information from the local arrangement of the cortical and cancellous bone to allow functional-biomechanical inferences on the locomotor behavioral patterns. In Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus, the cancellous bone organization at the center of the femoral head shows principal strut orientation similar to that of fossil and recent humans, which indicates that australopiths were human-like in many aspects of their bipedalism. However, by combining outer morphology with superoinferior asymmetry in cortical bone thickness at the base of neck and mid-neck, it has been suggested that, while adapted for terrestrial bipedality, australopiths displayed a slightly altered gait kinematics compared to Homo.

A multiscale stratigraphic investigation of the context of StW 573 'Little Foot' and Member 2, Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa.

The Sterkfontein Caves is currently the world's richest Australopithecus-bearing site. Included in Sterkfontein's hominin assemblage is StW 573 ('Little Foot'), a near-complete Australopithecus skeleton discovered in Member 2 in the Silberberg Grotto. Because of its importance to the fossil hominin record, the geological age of StW 573 has been the subject of significant debate.

The long limb bones of the StW 573 Australopithecus skeleton from Sterkfontein Member 2: Descriptions and proportions.

Due to its completeness, the A.L. 288-1 ('Lucy') skeleton has long served as the archetypal bipedal Australopithecus.

The bony labyrinth of StW 573 ("Little Foot"): Implications for early hominin evolution and paleobiology.

Because of its exceptional degree of preservation and its geological age of ∼3.67 Ma, StW 573 makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of early hominin evolution and paleobiology. The morphology of the bony labyrinth has the potential to provide information about extinct primate taxonomic diversity, phylogenetic relationships and locomotor behaviour.

The endocast of StW 573 ("Little Foot") and hominin brain evolution.

One of the most crucial debates in human paleoneurology concerns the timing and mode of the emergence of the derived cerebral features in the hominin fossil record. Given its exceptional degree of preservation and geological age (i.e.

Hominin vertebrae and upper limb bone fossils from Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa (1998-2003 excavations).

Objectives: We provide descriptions and functional interpretations of 11 >2.0 Ma hominin vertebral and upper limb fossils from Sterkfontein.

Materials And Methods: We employed taphonomic methods to describe postmortem damage observed on the fossils.

The Oldowan industry from Swartkrans cave, South Africa, and its relevance for the African Oldowan.

The oldest recognized artifacts at the Swartkrans cave hominid-bearing site in South Africa have long been known to occur in the Lower Bank of Member 1, now dated with the cosmogenic nuclide burial method to ca. 1.8-2.

Cranial vault thickness variation and inner structural organization in the StW 578 hominin cranium from Jacovec Cavern, South Africa.

The Sterkfontein Caves site is one of the richest early hominin fossil localities in Africa. More specifically, the fossiliferous deposits within the lower-lying Jacovec Cavern have yielded valuable hominin remains; prominent among them is the Australopithecus partial cranium StW 578. Due to the fragmentary nature of the braincase, the specimen has not yet been formally assigned to a species.

Hominin skeletal part abundances and claims of deliberate disposal of corpses in the Middle Pleistocene.

Humans are set apart from other organisms by the realization of their own mortality. Thus, determining the prehistoric emergence of this capacity is of significant interest to understanding the uniqueness of the human animal. Tracing that capacity chronologically is possible through archaeological investigations that focus on physical markers that reflect "mortality salience.

Hominin hand bone fossils from Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa (1998-2003 excavations).

We describe eleven hominin metacarpals and phalanges recovered from Jacovec Cavern and Member 4 of the Sterkfontein Formation between 1998 and 2003. Collectively, the fossils date in excess of 2.0 Ma, and are probably attributable to Australopithecus africanus and/or Australopithecus prometheus.

New early Pleistocene hominin teeth from the Swartkrans Formation, South Africa.

We describe 14 hominin teeth and tooth fragments excavated recently from Swartkrans Cave (South Africa). The fossils derive from Members 1 (Lower Bank) and 3, from the Member 2/3 interface and from two deposits not yet assigned to member (the "Talus Cone Deposit" and the "Underground North Excavation" [UNE]) of the Swartkrans Formation, and include the first hominin fossil from the UNE, the two smallest Paranthropus robustus deciduous maxillary second molars in the entire hominin fossil record, and one of the smallest P. robustus permanent maxillary second molars from Swartkrans.

Earliest modern human-like hand bone from a new >1.84-million-year-old site at Olduvai in Tanzania.

Modern humans are characterized by specialized hand morphology that is associated with advanced manipulative skills. Thus, there is important debate in paleoanthropology about the possible cause-effect relationship of this modern human-like (MHL) hand anatomy, its associated grips and the invention and use of stone tools by early hominins. Here we describe and analyse Olduvai Hominin (OH) 86, a manual proximal phalanx from the recently discovered >1.

First partial skeleton of a 1.34-million-year-old Paranthropus boisei from Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

Recent excavations in Level 4 at BK (Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania) have yielded nine hominin teeth, a distal humerus fragment, a proximal radius with much of its shaft, a femur shaft, and a tibia shaft fragment (cataloged collectively as OH 80). Those elements identified more specifically than to simply Hominidae gen. et sp.

First records of talon cusps on baboon maxillary incisors argue for standardizing terminology and prompt a hypothesis of their formation.

Dental characters can provide vital clues for understanding intra- and intertaxonomic morphological variation and its underlying genetic and environmental components. However, the unambiguous identification of particular traits and their comparative study is often confounded by lack of consistent terminology in the relevant literature. This difficulty is exacerbated when the etiologies are not completely understood, as is the case with talon cusps.

New hominid fossils from Member 1 of the Swartkrans formation, South Africa.

Member 1 of the Swartkrans Formation is comprised of two sedimentary infills, the Lower Bank (LB) and the Hanging Remnant (HR). Together, the LB and HR preserve fossils of early Homo and Paranthropus robustus, Earlier Stone Age lithic artifacts, purported bone digging tools and butchered animal bones. Collectively, this evidence was the first to establish the co-existence of two early Pleistocene hominid species and also led to inferences of plant root harvesting and meat-eating by one or both of those species.

Newly discovered fossil- and artifact-bearing deposits, uranium-series ages, and Plio-Pleistocene hominids at Swartkrans cave, South Africa.

We report on new research at Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, that provides evidence of two previously unrealized artifact- and fossil-bearing deposits. These deposits underlie a speleothem dated by the uranium-thorium disequilibrium technique to 110,000+/-1,980 years old, the first tightly constrained, geochronological date available for the site. Recovered fauna from the two underlying deposits-including, prominently, the dental remains of Paranthropus (Australopithecus) robustus from the uppermost layer (Talus Cone Deposit)-indicate a significantly older, late Pliocene or early Pleistocene age for these units.

The context of Stw 573, an early hominid skull and skeleton from Sterkfontein Member 2: taphonomy and paleoenvironment.

The reconstructed taphonomic and paleoenvironmental contexts of a ca. 4 million-year-old partial hominid skeleton (Stw 573) from Sterkfontein Member 2 are described through presentation of the results of our analyses of the mammalian faunal assemblage associated stratigraphically with the hominid. The assemblage is dominated by cercopithecoids (Parapapio and Papio) and felids (Panthera pardus, P.