IN PICS | Little Foot finds a home at the University of Witwatersrand

The University of Witwatersrand is now home to one of the world’s oldest and virtually most complete fossil of human ancestry‚ known as Little Foot.

Little Foot was unveiled to the public for the very first time by Professor Ron Clarke who discovered the first four bones of her foot in 1994 in the Sterkfontein caves.

Three years later‚ he sent two other paleoscientists back to the cave in search of more bones. A day of searching led to the massive discovery of the buried bones.

“As has been said‚ she is the most complete Australopithecus skeleton ever discovered from anywhere‚” said Clarke.

For the last few years‚ he and his assistants‚ Andrew Phaswana and Abel Molepolle‚ have spent time carefully extracting the bones from the rocks they were embalmed in after decades underground.

Clarke said he refused to bow to the pressure of rushing the process and using big tools or blasting to extract the bones from the rocks as he wanted to ensure that he did not damage them.

Little Foot was believed to have been a female who was around 1‚3m high and had walked upright.

She had features similar to the human‚ having legs which are longer than the arms. This was contrary to the apes who have arms that are longer than the legs‚ said Clarke.

The few missing pieces of her skeleton were believed to have possibly been taken as souvenirs by tourists who visited the caves prior to it being illegal to remove items from there. “[Others could have been] washed down to a lower level in the cave‚” Clarke added.

While the bones of hyenas and leopards were discovered in caves that Little Foot was discovered in‚ to date she is the only human-like fossil to be found there.

Clarke said she probably died after falling into the cave.

Other species similar to Little Foot may have died and been consumed by scavengers but her remains were preserved because she was swallowed by the cave‚ Clarke said.

Marking the occasion‚ Wits Vice-Chancellor Adam Habib said Paleoscience was fundamental to addressing race relations in current times.

“We can’t understand the political relevance today and the notion of common humanity without coming to terms with the scientific foundation of where that basis lies. Clarke and many of his colleagues… effectively establish the scientific foundations for when we say that we are a common humanity‚” Habib said.