Kromdraai

Kromdraai is a paleoanthropological site in western Gauteng in South Africa . It belongs together with a number of other sites, which under the name Cradle of Humankind ( Cradle of Humankind ) are known, since 1999 the UNESCO - World Heritage Site .

Kromdraai is not far from the city of Krugersdorp . The name is derived from Afrikaans "crooked bend" after a bend in the meandering Crocodile River .

The type specimen of Paranthropus robustus was discovered in Kromdraai in 1938 . In the nearby Coopers cave , fossils of Paranthropus robustus and early representatives of the genus Homo as well as stone tools were found.

All hominine fossils from the Kromdraai B site were digitized three-dimensionally with a CT scanner in a joint effort by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI) (Munich) and the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History (Pretoria), and the digitized copies in one at MPI-based database made freely accessible for scientific purposes.

Web links

Entry in the UNESCO World Heritage List (English) (French)
Official website of the Cradle of Humankind (English)

Individual evidence

^ Jean-Jacques Hublin : Free digital scans of human fossils. In: Nature . Volume 497, No. 7448, 32013, p. 183, doi: 10.1038 / 497183a

-25.929166666667 27.788888888889Coordinates: 25 ° 55 ′ 45 ″ S , 27 ° 47 ′ 20 ″ E

[1] Jean-Jacques Hublin : Free digital scans of human fossils. In: Nature . Volume 497, No. 7448, 32013, p. 183, doi: 10.1038 / 497183a