Kromdraai Permit Renewal

The Kromdraai archaeological site is located in a fossiliferous paleokarst site situated in the UNESCO World Heritage Site referred to as the “Cradle of Humankind” in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. Kromdraai is noteworthy because it features among the three southern African hominin-bearing sites considered to represent distinct temporal periods within the same stratigraphic succession. Kromdraai also yielded a partial skull and dentition (TM 1517) in 1938 that was designated as the holotype of a new genus and species, Paranthropus robustus. Although the hominin fossil assemblage collected from Kromdraai between 1938 and 2014 is rather paltry, morphometric and cladistic analyses of this material suggested that it represented a somewhat less-derived form of P. robustus than the considerably larger assemblage from the nearby site of Swartkrans. However, the geochronological and biotic relationships among the P. robustus-bearing sites in South Africa are not resolved.

We would like to apply for a renewal of the excavation permit for the Kromdraai Archaeological site. The discovery of Unit P and the underlying O requires further exploration to understand better the palaeoenvironmental and biological changes that are likely represented in this stratigraphic succession. Over the next three years, pending approval of the permit renewal, we will focus our attention on this specific aspect by investigating the contact between Unit P and 0 and its chronological significance.