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Ronald J. Clarke and his expedition team explored the Sterkfontein Cave, located 40 miles from the capital of South Africa, Johannesburg. After years of excavating and exploring, in 1994 Clarke made a profound discovery after finding four Australopithecus bones that were joined together. The discovery that these four bones were part of a foot led the excavation team to nickname their finding “Little Foot.” Three years later, Clarke’s excavation team were able to find more fragments of “Little Foot,” that included the tibia and other parts of the legs. After this discovery, Clarke and his team excavated the rest of the cave in order to find the missing fragments of “Little Foot.” Throughout the years excavating, Clarke was able to nearly fully assemble the Australopithecus skeleton in the Sterkfontein Cave.

Ronald J. Clarke excavated the Sterkfontein Cave with two South African anthropologists, Molefe and Motsumi in 1994. Clarke used hammers and chisels in order to extract additional fragments of “Little Foot.” After finding two large fragments of the lower leg, Clarke became convinced that the rest of the fragments lied in the Silberberg Grotto of the Sterkfontein Cave. He chiseled away at the breccia inside the Silberberg Grotto and found a hominid humerus. These bones allowed him to conclude that the mandible had ape-like features and that there were likely other limb bones deeper in the breccia. He had soon after found a portion of the skull of “Little Foot.” Clarke noted that this skull had been the most complete skull of an Australopithecus up to this point. From these bones, Clarke had concluded that the skeleton was approximately 3.5 million years old.

Clarke assigned the "Little Foot" bones to the specimen Stw 573 and categorized this Australopithecus as belonging to the Australopithecus africanus species. Clarke explained how he believed that the structure of the skeleton of “Little Foot” suggested that they had apelike functions.