First four bones of foot found in 1994

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

Little Foot was unveiled to the public for the 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 past few years‚ he and his assistants Andrew Phaswana and Abel Molepolle spent time carefully extracting the bones from the rocks they were embalmed in underground for millions of years.

Clarke said he refused to bow to the pressure of rushing the process and of 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 is believed to have been a female who was around 1.3m tall and walked upright.

She had features similar to a human‚ having legs which are longer than the arms, unlike apes whose arms 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 . “[Others could have been] washed down to a lower level in the cave‚” Clarke said.

Clarke said she probably died after falling and got swallowed by the cave.