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(birds tweeting)
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On this hill nearly four million years ago,
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Little Foot, one of our early ancestors, wandered.
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Today the excavations at Sterkfontein Caves
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near Johannesburg in South Africa
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have provided us with one of the richest sources
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of knowledge about our origins.
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So much so that the area has become known
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as the cradle of mankind.
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(dramatic music)
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Over 800 early human fossils have been found
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here to date, including the most complete skeleton
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of its kind in the world, Little Foot.
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Today the Sterkfontein Cave system is surrounded
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by grassland and scrub,
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and was just another koppie or small hill
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until the first fossils were found here in the 1930s.
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But 3,670,000 years ago, in the time of Little Foot,
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the Sterkfontein region of South Africa
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was more like the Central African forests of today.
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There were massive trees with lianas or vines
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clinging to their towering trunks,
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and of course, there were many apes.
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Apes all sharing the forest and its food
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and shelter from the formidable array
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of predators on the ground.
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Amongst them were our ancestors.
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We know more about the environment that
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Little Foot lived in then because
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fossilized material from her days
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has been found in the caves, along with her own fossils.
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With a lot of Australopithecus fossils,
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we find fossil wood, and that fossil wood
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has been identified by Professor Marion Bamford
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of this Evolutionary Studies Institute,
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and she's identified most of those fragments
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as belonging to a species of liana,
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Dichapetalum mombuttense, which now only grows
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in tropical West and Central Africa.
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It's a very interesting piece of wood
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because it's a liana.
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Now, lianas have a very special structure,
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so we know it's a vine, and vines don't grow
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upright by themselves.
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They have to have something to grow over.
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In other words, large trees.
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So although we don't get the large trees preserved,
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we get the vines, which means that there were
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large trees at that time, and that fits in
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nicely with the animals that we've found there,
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because they were hoard of monkeys
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that are arborial, and so the hominids at the time,
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and even earlier than that, were growing in
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a much more wooded environment than we have today,
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and the hominids would have been living in there
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or associated with there, and they fell into
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the little cavities that are opened
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down to the caves, along with the woods,
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along with the fauna and all sorts of bits and pieces.
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The Sterkfontein cave system is still
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pockmarked with dangerous holes,
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so now walkways protect visitors and scientists.
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In the time of Little Foot, 3.6 million years ago,
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covered with lush vegetation, the holes surrounding
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the vast cave system were often a death trap.
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Sterkfontein is almost daily yielding
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important new discoveries related to our origins.
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The considerable excavations over decades
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have yielded famous discoveries,
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including the Australopithecus africanus
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and prometheus species, not least of which
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is that of Little Foot.
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At once tragic and ironic, the fact
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that Little Foot fell into one of these holes
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leading to the caves below meant that
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her skeleton was preserved mostly intact,
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safe from the ravages of predators and scavengers
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for millions of years.
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The skeleton was sealed mostly within breccia,
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a type of natural concrete which had covered
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and hardened over the bones for nearly four million years.
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To reveal her fossil remains within this
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was little short of a miracle, a miracle
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that took over 25 years of exploring
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and extraordinary patience, working through the rock
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in fractions of millimeters.
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Even more astonishing was that evidence
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of Little Foot had been discovered but overlooked
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for some 15 years before this at Sterkfontein.
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The story of Little Foot nearly goes back to
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before my time, in 1978 to 1990.
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Lime miners' rubble that had been
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blasted out as early as the 1920s.
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Crushed limestone was used then as a building material,
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was removed from a very deep cave at Sterkfontein
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known as the Silverberg Grotto.
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Teams were sent in to remove the blasted material.
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The reason they wanted to take this material out
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was that it was full of fossil bone,
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and Phillip Tobias thought that they might find
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something older than the hominids
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or Australopithecus that they'd been finding
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at higher levels at Sterkfontein.
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He thought they might find something as old
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as the famous Lucy from Ethiopia.
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This sculpture of the late
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Professor Phillip Tobias stands at Sterkfontein
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in memoriam as the team leader of the excavations here
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for 50 years, establishing the caves
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as a World Heritage Site in 1999.
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Tobias' hunch about discovering a much older
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hominid deep in the caves was correct,
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but would only be realized years later
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through the detective of Professor Ron Clark,
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for the secret lay not in a cave, but in a story.
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So they removed all this rubble
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and they processed it over the years.
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It remained like that for a long time
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until 1994, when Phillip Tobias asked me
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if I could do an in situ excavation
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in that deep underground cave.
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We got many fossils of monkeys and of carnivores,
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but very few bovids.
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Bovids are hoofed animals,
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including ancient buffalo and many antelope species.
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And I thought this is very strange,
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because up in Member 4, we find a lot of bovids
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and also a lot of Australopithecus,
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but down here we hadn't found a single
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tooth of Australopithecus, the ape man.
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The various Australopithecus
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species found at Sterkfontein, Australopithecus
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meaning a southern ape, were all
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before the various Homo species,
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which are believed to be more directly linked
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to early humans.
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So I went to the boxes of fossils
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that were in our shed at Sterkfontein,
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in our big store room there.
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In the store room, Ron Clark
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was hoping to find some fossils of bovids
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or cloven-hoofed animals.
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Instead, he found something that would
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change his life and the history of our origins forever.
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I took one of the boxes, put it on the desk,
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hoping I would find some bovids in there.
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I took out a bag and tipped it on the desk,
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and to my surprise, I found this
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among the animal fossils.
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Ron Clark had found the very first
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bone of Little Foot.
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This is a hominid talus, an ankle bone.
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How was it that this was missed?
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And then, to my delight, in the same bag
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I found the bone that went in front of it,
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the navicular, and then the bone that went
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in front of that, the medial cuneiform,
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and then part of the first metatarsal,
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leading down to the big toe.
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It was unusual to find four articulating
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foot bones like that in Sterkfontein.
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Normally you find just one foot bone
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if you're lucky, but to find four together was unheard of.
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That was exciting, but then, some years later
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in May 1997, I chanced upon more of the same foot,
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and the way that happened was interesting.
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Ron Clark found the next link
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in the Little Foot discovery in the hominid vault
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here at the University of the Witwatersrand
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in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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And to my surprise, I saw a box there
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that was labeled as containing monkey fossils
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from a lime miners' dump number 18.
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And the first bag I took out, through it
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I could see a little white bone
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that I recognized as a foot bone of a hominid,
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and then another one, and then another one.
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I also found part of a tibia, and I found
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part of a fibula.
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So I had parts of the foot and lower legs
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from left and right, and that convinced me
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that the rest of the skeleton must be in the cave,
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and that these bones had been blasted off by lime miners,
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leaving the rest of it still there
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in the cave infill.
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So I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful
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if we could find the rest of it?
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And I gave this cast to Stephen Motsumi
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and Nkwane Molefe and said, "Go with torches
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"down into the cave and see if you can find
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"anywhere that will fit it."
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Well, this was a seemingly impossible task,
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because the cave was vast, it was dark,
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it was deep, the surface of the ground
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was irregular, rock-strewn and dusty.
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Anyway, they took me at my word,
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and miraculously, after one and a half days
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of searching in that cavern, they found the spot,
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and when I next went down there,
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Stephen told me that they'd found it,
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took me down, showed me, and next to it
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I was able to fit this one on as well.
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After five years, Ron and his team
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now had the complete Little Foot.
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Stephen Motsumi and Nkwane Molefe
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had pulled off another miracle
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on the long journey to Little Foot.
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The few bones he now had told Ron a lot.
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The first was that Little Foot walked upright like us.
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Now, Ron and the team wanted to find the rest.
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We began chiseling away the enormous rocks
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that were above this.
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There were some huge rocks of dolomite and chert,
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and we were chiseling that away to get down
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to that level.
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We uncovered much of the lower legs
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after several weeks, months of work,
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just carefully, carefully cleaning away the rock,
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and when we got close to the bones
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we used what we call an air scribe
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which is a pneumatically-driven needle.
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The air scribes allowed the team
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to uncover the bones from tons of rock
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over years without damaging them.
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Experienced researchers learn to tell rock from bone
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by color, texture and shape.
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So we uncovered the lower legs.
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When we got to the middle of the thighs,
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there was no more.
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And I asked them, "This is impossible.
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"How can there be just the lower legs
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"and not the rest of the skeleton?"
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So we went on chiseling away these big rocks
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and breccia cave infill, right up to the roof,
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month after month, and found nothing,
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until I realized that there was a cavity
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underneath these legs at a lower level,
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and I concluded that what must have happened
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is that millions of years previously there'd been
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an ancient collapse, and the upper part
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of the body had collapsed down to a lower level
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and then been sealed in by a
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very thick flowstone, stalagmite.
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Ron thought that possibly
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part of the body, with the upper legs and skull,
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had dropped away over the millions of years
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to a lower part of the cave.
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His instinct was right.
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And it had been sealed in by that,
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which went over the upper part of the body
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and beneath the lower legs.
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So I said to Stephen, "Let's chisel through this."
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And we chiseled and chiseled, and...
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One day, miraculously, again, his chisel struck bone.
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There.
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And it uncovered that.
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And I thought, what on earth is it?
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Is this a cast?
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It's like a...
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Ron and his team had uncovered a skull
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that would change everything.
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Ron's instinct had led them to an unprecedented find,
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the complete skull of Little Foot,
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its left side partly compressed by the weight of rock.
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Not only was it the most complete skull
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of its kind ever found, it was even more astounding
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in that it still had a complete set of teeth
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or dead tissue.
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This was the first time ever that a complete
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adult skull of an Australopithecus had been found.
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Years of dedicated
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millimeter by millimeter progress through the rock
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were revealing their rewards, and there
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was more to come.
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That was the beginning of the excitement that was to come.
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We went on cleaning away very carefully
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with this little air scribe, month after month.
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The air scribes would remove
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the hard rock from around the soft fossils
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with scalpel-like precision.
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And then we worked further up slow,
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and we got the arm, and we got ribs,
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and we got vertebrae, and then at the lower level
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we got the pelvis and so on.
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(slow, atmospheric music)
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It had been a miraculous journey
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with the discovery of the first foot bones alone
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from 1980 to 1997, and from then on until
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the final skeleton in 2017.
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Now the world had a comprehensive intact skeleton
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from one individual, and the learning would begin.
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And the learning started from the very beginning
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with the first bones.
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Starting with the big toe, Ron discovered
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the first notable difference about Little Foot.
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When I found the first four bones, I had already
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determined that it had a very interesting development
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here, this joint, in that it had some mobility.
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So it had a slightly mobile big toe,
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not as much as the apes, but slight mobility
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which would have assisted it in climbing in trees.
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Little Foot's intact arm and hand
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revealed even more secrets.
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So a beautiful arm.
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What this told us, it's the first time ever
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that a complete hand had been found like that,
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and still attached to the arm.
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The hand was exactly like ours, with long thumb
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and short fingers.
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It was not like that of the apes,
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which have a shorter thumb and long fingers
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because they suspend themselves from branches.
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They also have long arms to assist them
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in swinging in trees.
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When they come down to the ground,
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they use those long arms and long hands
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as supports for walking.
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This one didn't have that.
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It had arms that were like ours, relatively short.
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It had a hand that was like ours,
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and when I was eventually able to reconstruct the legs,
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I could see that the legs were actually
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longer than the arms, just like us.
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This, a human ancestor, had proportions similar to us,
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and it walked fully upright as we do.
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And it would have to climb in trees for two reasons.
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Firstly, to get at fruits, which were up there.
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And secondly, to get away from the carnivores
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that were on the ground.
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We know that at the time when Little Foot lived,
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there were many, many very big carnivores.
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There were several types of saber-tooth cat.
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There were also the leopard and the lion
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that we get today, although some of them
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were larger than those that we get today.
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And there were several different types of hyena,
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so it was a very, very (laughs) unhappy environment
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on the ground for a small hominid or Australopithecus.
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Now that we have Little Foot's
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full skeleton, we now have an accurate measure
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of her height compared to modern humans.
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And I'm sure that at night, Little Foot
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would have wanted to nest up in the trees.
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(birds singing)
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Learning from Little Foot continues.
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Her pelvis, with its greater sciatic notch,
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indicates that she was probably female.
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Her teeth have let us know her age of about 35 years.
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Her brain, with its complete endocast and skull,
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will hopefully answer questions about how
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she might have thought or felt,
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and about her cognitive processes.
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The scientist beginning their journey
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into Little Foot's brain is Dr. Amelie Beaudet
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of the University of the Witwatersrand.
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Yeah.
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Little Foot can be used as a reference
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for understanding evolutionary patterns,
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because we have this individual which is
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very well-preserved at a specific time,
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so 3.67 million years old, and the specific
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geographical context, so we can really use it
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as a reference for understanding later evolutionary changes.
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We extracted two very important structures from the skull.
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One was the brain endocast that we can see in red here,
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and here's the inner ear, and that,
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because we know that those two structures
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could be very informative to know about how
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Little Foot lived at that time in South Africa.
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Today Little Foot lies in place of honor
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in the hominid vault in the Evolutionary Studies Institute
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at the University of the Witwatersrand,
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freed from the rock that held her fast four million year.
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Hopefully, she will teach us even more about ourselves
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in the time to come.
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(ethereal, atmospheric music)
28018
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