Modern excavation of the caves began in the late 1890s by limestone miners who noticed the
fossils and brought them to the attention of scientists. In 1936, students of Professor
Raymond Dart and Dr.
Robert Broom from the
University of the Witwatersrand began concerted excavations. The caves yielded the first adult
Australopithecine, substantially strengthening Dart's claim that the skull known as the
Taung Child (an
Australopithecus africanus) was a human ancestor. There was a pause in excavation during World War II, but after the war Dr. Robert Broom continued excavations. In 1947, he found a nearly complete skull of an adult female (
STS 5)
A. africanus (or possibly that of an adolescent male). Broom initially named the skull
Plesianthropus transvaalensis (
near-man from
Transvaal), but it became better known by its nickname,
Mrs. Ples. Mrs. Ples is now defined as a member of
A. africanus. In 1984, Peter Verhulsel, who was a member of a cave diving expedition researching one of the caves, was lost and ultimately starved to death after three weeks in the cave as rescue groups could not find him. In 1997, a nearly complete skeleton of a second species of
Australopithecus (StW 573) was found in the caves by
Ronald J. Clarke; extraction of the remains from the surrounding
breccia is ongoing. The skeleton was named
Little Foot, since the first parts found (in 1995, in storage) were the bones of a foot. Excavations continue to this day, and finds now total some 500 hominids, making Sterkfontein one of the richest sites in the world for early hominids. The Palaeo-Anthropology Scientific Trust (PAST), a non-profit trust fund established in 1993, sponsors over 90% of the research undertaken at Sterkfontein and was instrumental in its nomination as a World Heritage Site. ==Dating of the deposits==