South Africa Fossils Tour

This is a pic I took of the original (not a cast) Taung child, the first prehuman fossil found on the continent of Africa by Raymond Dart in 1925, which began the belief that Darwin was right when he postulated that humans evolved not in Asia or Europe, but in Africa. I was fortunate to travel to South Africa in 2015 to visit the Fossils Vault of Wits University. Dr. Francis Thackery and Dr. Lee Berger were kind enough to take my friend and me on a tour of the vault and explain what we were seeing. Though the Taung Child was what I went there to see, there was also in the vault the Skull in the Rock ( Australopithecus Sediba) fossil, found by Lee Berger. What I did not know was that Homo Naledi, also discovered by Berger, was there in the vault as well! It was boxed up in containers on the shelves and not available for viewing because Berger had not yet revealed it to the World. Following our visit to Wits University we toured the Cradle of Humankind outside of Johanesburg, and the Human Origins Center on the University Campus. What a trip of a life time this was! I will close this post by sharing this Taung Child pic once again. This pic of Taung is a 3.3 million years old skull that was first thought to be 6 year old girl, but now believed to be only 3 years old. Taung renains one of the most important fossil finds in the history of paleoanthropology! 0 Comments