Prof Lee R. Berger Ph.D. D.Sc. FRSSAfASSAf is an award-winning researcher, explorer, author, palaeoanthropologist and speaker. He is the recipient of the National Geographic Society’s  first  Prize  for  Research  and  Exploration and  the  Academy of  Achievement’s Golden Plate Award. His work has brought him recognition ogas a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and the South African Academy of Sciences and prominent advisory positions including the Chairmanship of the Fulbright Commission of South Africa, the Senior Advisory  Board  of  the  Global  Young  Academy  and  the Centre  of  Excellence  in PalaeoSciences of South Africa among many others. 

The Rising Star Cave system in South Africa has revealed yet more important discoveries, only a year and a half after it was announced that the richest fossil hominin site in Africa had been discovered, and that it contained a new hominin species named Homo naledi by the scientists who described it.

The age of the original Homo naledi remains from the Dinaledi Chamber has been revealed to be startlingly young in age. Homo naledi, which was first announced in September 2015, was alive sometime between 335 and 236 thousand years ago. This places this population of primitive small-brained hominins at a time and place that it is likely they lived alongside Homo sapiens. This is the first time that it has been demonstrated that another species of hominin survived alongside the first humans in Africa.

The new discovery and research was done by a large team of researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) (South Africa), James Cook University (Australia), the University of Wisconsin (Madison, United States), and more than 30 additional international institutions have today announced two major discoveries related to the fossil hominin species Homo naledi.

The team was led by Professor Lee Berger of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a National Geographic Explorer in Residence. The discovery of the second chamber with abundant Homo naledi fossils includes one of the most complete skeletons of a hominin ever discovered, as well as the remains of at least one child and another adult. The discovery of a second chamber has led the team to argue that there is more support for the controversial hypothesis that Homo naledi deliberately disposed of its dead in these remote, hard to reach caverns

https://www.wits.ac.za/homonaledi

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