South Africa
Research highlight: Brain of the Taung Child
A new study of the endocast discovered a hundred years ago asks, what if we found this fossil today?
The circumstances of the Taung discovery
The textbook story of the fossil leaves out a wider context in which scientists interpreted the first evidence of Australopithecus.
Finding ancient fire use in the Rising Star cave system
The study of the underground landscape enters a new phase with evidence of charcoal and burned animal bone in deep chambers.
How old is the "early Homo sapiens" skull from Florisbad?
Introducing a new preprint in which I examine critically the evidence for a skull thought to be contemporary with Homo naledi.
Evidence of cooking rhizomes from an early Middle Stone Age context in Border Cave, South Africa
Border Cave has exceptional preservation of plant remains, giving a window into the diets of hominins.
Return of the “amazing” Boskops
Bringing some scientific reality to an excerpt from a book that tries to revive the myth of an ancient, large-brained race of humans.
The “amazing” Boskops
A book tries to revive the myth of a large-brained ancient race in southern Africa. It was wrong in 1958 and remains wrong today.
Did giant humans walk the Middle Pleistocene earth?
A National Geographic documentary program prompts questions about some fossils from South Africa with large body size estimates.