The Australopithecus Mrs. Little Foot is 3.67 million years old. It took 20 years to extract it from its gangue of stone and restore it. Discovered in South Africa, it was presented on December 6, 2017, to the whole world.
It took Professor Ron Clarke and his colleagues Stephen Motsumi and Nkwame Molefe 20 years to pull Little Foot out of her stone gangue from Sterkfontein Cave in South Africa. Piece, by piece. The beautiful Australopithecus was unveiled on December 6, 2017, to the public, assembled under a glass coffin, during a moving ceremony at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
This long-term discovery confirms that South Africa is one of the most important evolutionary cradles for human origins. With 90% of her bones, Little Foot would be a completely restored Australopithecus.
The oldest Australopithecus in South Africa, it has been dated to 3.67 million years and its particular anatomy fascinates the specialists. Twenty-five scientific articles are being written and peer-reviewed and are expected to appear in early 2018 in a rank A peer-reviewed journal.
Discovered by Ron Clarke, Institute for Evolutionary Studies, University from Witwatersrand between 1994 and 1997, it was nicknamed „little foot“ by the great paleontologist Philip Tobias (died in 2012) because the first bone that had been exhumed was a small piece of the foot.
Ron Clarke spotted the bone in a piece of breccia cut from Sterkfontain’s deep cave, reported to the University, and asked his assistants Stephen Motsumi and Nkwame Molefe to search for additional bones. The puzzle lasted two decades.
