16 years ago today! More news on sediba coming this year…

Here’s something you don’t see every day (or in fact ever) the bigger bone is a hominin phalanx. The little round bone, a sesamoid bone nearly in anatomical position. 2mya from Malapa - A sediba. Beautiful preparation by one of our outstanding preparators Bonele of the Nat Geo Rising Star Project.

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Evidence shows Homo naledi deliberately buried their dead Discovery in South Africa suggests Homo naledi practiced deliberate burial 240,000 years ago, reshaping views of human evolution.

archaeologymag.com/2025/09/homo...

Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi Remains of the extinct hominin species Homo naledi were interred by members of their own species, the first time that burial has been documented in populations other than modern humans and Neanderthal...

Have you read this more than 150 pages of science? doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Did Homo Naledi Bury Its Dead or Not? Where Do We Stand? YouTube video by Gutsick Gibbon

m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pc0...

Check out this video, "homo naledi burial" share.google/WinNwiOxOVqJ...

Homo Naledi May Have Buried Its Dead After All, Peer Reviewer Accepts New arguments convincingly show that the skeletons weren't transported by natural processes.

www.iflscience.com/homo-naledi-...

Extinct human relative practiced cultural burials 120,000 years ago Fresh evidence has once again suggested that Homo naledi may have buried their dead deep in caves about 120,000 years before modern humans.

interestingengineering.com/culture/anci...

New Homo naledi evidence supports intentional burial practices Anthropologist Lee Berger and his team at the University of the Witwatersrand, working within the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, have published their most extensive evidence yet of deliberat...

phys.org/news/2025-09...

Did This Species Bury Its Dead 120,000 Years Before Us? New Claims Reignite Debate The fierce debate over whether Homo sapiens was the first species to bury its dead is far from over.

www.sciencealert.com/did-this-spe...

Like our team, you get to be the first people in almost 2 million years to see the whole palate of the Holotype of Australopithecus sediba exposed - thanks Zandile!

Meaning-making behavior in a small-brained hominin, Homo naledi, from the late Pleistocene: contexts and evolutionary implications Evidence for H. naledi and increasing recognition of meaning-making behavior across the later Pleistocene suggests that the hominin emotional, socio-cognitive niche is broader and more significant tha...

For greater understanding of the importance of recognizing culture and complex behaviors in a small-brained hominin elifesciences.org/articles/89125 Our new paper out in elife

Very excited about new photographic scales from @nationalgeographic.bsky.social for archeologists, palaeontologists, photographers, geologists and forensic scientists! First Nat Geo Society scales ever! Enjoy!

A fantastic interview on eNCA news with Tebogo Makhubela celebrating his National Geographic #Wayfinder award! Well deserved and enjoy listening to the future of human origins research in #Africa - Tebogo is active on LinkedIn under Tebogo Vincent Makhubela follow him! www.enca.com/videos/wayfi...

www.facebook.com/share/1Ajo7V... here’s some fun one of @nationalgeographic.bsky.social latest explorers as a superhero!

The National Geographic Society Honors 15 Visionaries: Meet the Recipients of the 2025 Wayfinder Award Presented by Kia Celebrating 15 Explorers transforming how we understand nature, culture and the future of our planet

The future of exploration and discovery in good hands in South Africa and across the planet! news.nationalgeographic.org/the-national... @nationalgeographic.bsky.social

SA Scientist Named National Geographic Explorer for Fossil Research Dr Tebogo Makhubela has been named a National Geographic Explorer and recipient of the 2025 Wayfinder Award, putting South African

I am proud to know you! Welcome to the yellow border, welcome to the family and sharing many great explorations, discoveries, scientific endeavours and moments of fun long into the future. Well done! Never Stop Exploring www.goodthingsguy.com/people/sa-sc... @nationalgeographic.bsky.social

Two rows each showing four Homo naledi skull fossils laidout from left to right. The top row shows the outer bone surface in transparent beige while the internal, brain-covering surface is solid pink. The bottom row shows the same internal surfaces, but color coded to show local surface curvature

Fossil fun day Monday

When did our ancestors start looking up to the stars? Changes in the sky have been important to peoples throughout the world. That connection may go back much further than our species.

So many connections between star knowledge and ancient societies. Some have been embodied in monuments like Stonehenge, but the knowledge of they sky and its relation to natural and social cycles is vastly older.

www.johnhawks.net/p/when-did-o...

Well work on making that clearer in the final product

So there are not many changes at all as it’s a series of chert ledges and dolomitic struts. I would suggest if anything it’s “easier” today than it was. It’s very hard to create understanding of such a space without “being there” and we really do sympathize with misconceptions

Humans go to a great deal of unnecessary effort to carry/take/move their dead to their place of rest. Is it really that odd another species might care/love a much to go to great efforts?

One thing that bugs me is why we seem to miscommunicate that whatever entrance(s) there were it doesn’t matter. It had to be so restrictive that pretty much only naledi got in. We seem to have failed to get that to sink in but it’s important

So the dragons back block doesn’t work the way you draw it. It doesn’t “block” the chute labyrinth area - that is a separate space. And it didn’t “fall” far so it’s not a “cork” so to speak, in a way our earlier writings perhaps didn’t make clear. There was never a “walk in” entrance if you will.

Before Keneiloe Molopyane jumped into the work at Gladysvale - I did this video during Covid about the history behind this interesting site - good things are soon to be seen from the latest work at this site! www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-...

Take a look at this beautiful mandible from Swartrkans in South Africa - Skw 5. It’s what we presently call a Paranthropus robustus. Notice the “robust” mandible, large teeth and molarization of the premolars. What a lovely specimen of an ancient hominin likely between 1.5 and 2 million years old!

The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins The long read: When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not everyone was convinced – and the bitter...

A long-form article, a lesson in why hiding fossils from colleagues and not using an open access/collaborative policies and leaving the privilege of working with original fossils only to a few is a historically bad idea for paleoanthropology www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

A new phylogeny published! Australopithecus sediba gives rise to X-Men (in the Marvel Universe at least). @marvel @marvelcomicshqs.bsky.social @marvelentertainment.tumblr.com.web.brid.gy #xmen #Sediba #fossil #phylogenetics #malapa

The Stw 431 pelvis is one of the few partial skeletons from Member 4 Sterkfontein. It has an unusual, flattened pelvis and is typically assigned to Australopithecus africanus and by various estimates thought to be around 2.3 million years old. #fossils #exploration #australopithecus #hominid