“The Cradle of Humankind is a complex system of limestone caves that has the world’s highest concentration of ancient human fossils. It’s located about 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. When I started working there as a PhD student ten years ago, I never thought that I would be the person making discoveries. I always saw myself as a support person who helped the palaeontologists and archaeologists.
Now, I work as a senior geologist at four sites in the Cradle of Humankind, and the more time I spend there, the more I realize how much is still unknown in the field of geology. Before 2013, none of the geology research here was done by local researchers. Instead, people would fly in from the United States, Australia and France for a week, map a section of cave where fossils were excavated, collect samples and then do their analyses abroad.
This photo was taken in the Rising Star Cave, which was mined heavily from around the early 1900s until the late 1940s. Researchers typically look for blocks of rock left over from mining activity, because that’s where the fossils tend to be, but one day my team and I decided to investigate what we thought was the bedrock. We eventually broke through to discover some of the best fossils we’ve found so far, along with missing skeletal elements from other fossil pieces that had been found closer to the surface.