Researchers have shown that an almost-complete Australopithecus skeleton named "Little Foot" is about three million years old.
Scientists have been finding bits and pieces of the hominid Australopithecus in the Sterkfontein caves of Gauteng, South Africa for years, a University of the Witwatersrand news release reported.
In 1997 Ron Clarke, Stephen Motsumi and Nkwane Molefe of the University of the Witwatersrand found a nearly-complete skeleton in the calcified sediment of the ancient caves. The team carefully excavated the skeleton from the cave walls. This is the first time researchers have made such a successful discovery in calcified deposits.
The skeleton had endured a great amount of damage and displacement over the millions of years due to "partial collapse into a lower cavity," the news release reported. Calcareous flowstone had also filled in the voids that formed around the displaced bones.
Some researchers dated the flowstone and claimed it showed the age of the skeleton, but the team believes the hominid died long before the flowstone encompassed its body.
"A French team of specialists in the study of limestone caves, Laurent Bruxelles, Richard Maire and Richard Ortega, together with Clarke and Dominic Stratford of Wits University, have now shown that the dated flowstones filled voids formed by ancient erosion and collapse and that the skeleton is therefore older, probably considerably older, than the dated flowstones," the news release reported.
The finding disputes the previously-believed idea that Little Foot is only 2.2 years old and rather walked the Earth about three million years ago.
"The history of Little Foot is very different. Perhaps while being pursued by a predator, this individual fell more than twenty meters into a hole and died. The body then rolled down a scree slope where it landed with one arm stretched over the head and the other at its side. Through time, the body was buried under more than ten meters of sediments and rocks," an INRAP news release reported.
The species Australopithecus Prometheus was named by Professor Raymond Dart back in 1948, the Wits University news release reported.
