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by samfoo 3932 days ago
Awesome to see the Rising Star Expedition on HN! I was working in Johannesburg while the expedition was active and my partner managed, through a serious of very fortunate events to become a caver on the expedition. Here she is carrying up some of the first bones they extracted - https://i.imgur.com/IfT4PQz.jpg.

For those of you interested, the expedition was sponsored by National Geographic, and there was/is a fairly extensive blog (http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/blog/rising-star-expedi...) covering most of the details. When they first started pulling up the fossils, the excitement was palpable - http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/11/video-first-....

The expedition occurred nearly two years ago, and there were so many bones still left in the catchment that they left many behind.

Incidentally, though the article says it was scientists who discovered the fossils - they were actually discovered by amateur cavers. The Cradle of Humankind (so named because there are so many similar catchments in the surrounding area) has a massive system of caves and some of the most hardcore amateur cavers in the world.

4 comments

> Incidentally, though the article says it was scientists who discovered the fossils - they were actually discovered by amateur cavers.

Indeed, some more details here: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Accountant-found-Homo...

Is this a correct mirror for the video? The player on natgeo is not even sort of working here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_r3UnkjcL0

That's the one!
I live 15 minutes away from The Cradle/Maropeng. definitely going to the exhibition one of these days, very interesting discovery indeed!
I had to re-read the comment a few times before realising that you wrote "caver" and not "cadaver".
That's incredible!