title: Recent paleoanthropological excavations of in situ deposits at Makapansgat, South Africa--a first report.
abstract: The Makapansgat Limeworks is a significant Pliocene site both for its sample of 35 hominin fossils as well as its wealth of fossil fauna. The lithological and paleontological successions reveal local environmental changes that are important for understanding the context of hominin evolution in southern Africa. Yet most of the site's fossils were found in dumps left behind by quarry operations, and the paleoecological interpretations rest upon debatable assumptions about the original fossil provenience. We have recently initiated systematic paleoanthropological excavations at Makapansgat to recover well provenanced fossils in order to: 1) assess whether faunal successions are discernable in the Makapansgat sequence; 2) assist environmental interpretations of the site; 3) and potentially recover the oldest hominins in South Africa, roughly coincident with Australopithecus afarensis in East Africa. This paper presents a summary of our current paleoenvironmental research at the Limeworks and preliminary results of ongoing in situ excavations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St Louis, MO, USA. tccrawfo@artsci.wustl.edu
authors.forename: Tafline
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Crawford
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: McKee
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kuykendall
authors.forename: Alf
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Latham
authors.forename: Glenn C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Conroy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004777:Environment; D005580:Fossils; D015186:Hominidae; D010163:Paleontology / Q000379:methods; D013019:South Africa