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Taphonomy of Sterkfontein Australopithecus Skeletons (Ron J stone age institute publication series Series Editors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth Stone Age Institute Gosport, Indiana and Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Number 1. THE OLDOWAN: Case Studies into the Earliest Stone Age Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick, editors Number 2. BREATHING LIFE INTO FOSSILS: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain Travis Rayne Pickering, Kathy Schick, and Nicholas Toth, editors Number 3. THE CUTTING EDGE: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Human Origins Kathy Schick, and Nicholas Toth, editors Number 4. THE HUMAN BRAIN EVOLVING: Paleoneurological Studies in Honor of Ralph L. Holloway Douglas Broadfield, Michael Yuan, Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth, editors STONE AGE INSTITUTE PUBLICATION SERIES NUMBER 2 Series Editors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth breathing life into fossils: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain Editors Travis Rayne Pickering University of Wisconsin, Madison Kathy Schick Indiana University Nicholas Toth Indiana University Stone Age Institute Press · www.stoneageinstitute.org 1392 W. Dittemore Road · Gosport, IN 47433 COVER CAPTIONS AND CREDITS. Front cover, clockwise from top left. Top left: Artist’s reconstruction of the depositional context of Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, with a leopard consuming a hominid carcass in a tree outside the cave: bones would subsequently wash into the cave and be incorporated in the breccia deposits. © 1985 Jay H. Matternes. Top right: The Swartkrans cave deposits in South Africa, where excavations have yielded many hominids and other animal fossils. ©1985 David L. Brill. Bottom right: Reconstruction of a hominid being carried by a leopard. © 1985 Jay H. Matternes. Bottom left: Photograph of a leopard mandible and the skull cap of a hominid from Swartkrans, with the leopard’s canines juxtaposed with puncture marks likely produced by a leopard carrying its hominid prey. © 1985 David L. Brill. Center: Photo of Bob Brain holding a cast of a spotted hyena skull signed by all of the taphonomy conference participants. © 2004 Kathy Schick, Stone Age Institute. Back cover credits. Top: © 2004 Stone Age Institute. Bottom left: © 2004 Kathy Schick, Stone Age Institute. Bottom right: © 2005 Greg Murphy. Published by the Stone Age Institute. ISBN-10: 0-9792-2761-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-9792-2761-5 Copyright © 2007, Stone Age Institute Press. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher. CHAPTER 11 TAPHONOMY OF STERKFONTEIN AUSTRALOPITHECUS SKELETONS RON J. CLARKE ABSTRACT ural preservation of soft tissues has only occurred in very recent mummifi ed bodies such as those from the Bronze The rarity of complete or partial skeletons of Plio- Age in the Alps and the Incas in the Andes that were pre- Pleistocene hominids in open-air sites is due to the scatter- served by freezing or from the Iron Age of Denmark and ing and breakage of bones by carnivores and scavengers. England preserved in peat bogs (Bahn, 1996). In caves, it is also due to those factors, plus the scattering In the case of the Plio-Pleistocene sites that have and breakage caused by falling rocks and movement in a yielded fossil remains of early hominids it is rare to fi nd talus slope. At the Sterkfontein Cave site, however, there complete or partial skeletons. Although in East Africa the are two partial skeletons (Sts14 and StW431), consisting sedimentary conditions for preservation are good (volca- of torsos that appear to have resulted from feeding by a nic deposits in ancient lake beds), most hominid skel- particular predator or scavenger. There is also a virtually etons were damaged and disturbed either before burial complete skeleton that resulted from an individual fall- by predators and scavengers and/or after burial by water ing into a shaft, being apparently mummifi ed, and then disturbance, erosion, weathering and animal trampling. sealed in by fl owstone before the bones could be crushed Classic examples of such post-burial disturbance are the and scattered by rock movement on the steep talus slope. skeletons of “Lucy” and Olduvai Hominid 62. This paper discusses the factors involved in the preserva- The preservation conditions in the dolomite caves tion and distribution of hominid skeletal remains at Ster- of South Africa, while very different to those of the East kfontein, including those hominid remains less complete African lake beds, were affected by their own set of than these three skeletons. modifying factors. The degree of completeness of a fos- sil specimen at Sterkfontein Caves, be it cranial or post- INTRODUCTION cranial bone or whole or partial skeleton, is dependent upon the following factors: Under the right conditions it is possible for com- plete animal skeletons and even soft tissues and stomach 1. Mode of introduction to the cave, for example, by contents to be preserved as fossils for millions of years big cat, hyena, porcupine, bird of prey, death trap or as they were in the 50 million year old Eocene oil shale slope wash. deposits of Messel, near Frankfurt, Germany (Schaal 2. Position within the cave, such as under protective and Ziegler, 1992). Thus, theoretically, there is no rea- roof overhang, beneath open shaft, on talus slope son why, with correct conditions for preservation, com- which is subject to rock fall and displacement, in plete skeletons and soft tissues of early hominids should water, beneath stalactites, or on fl oors which might not somewhere have been preserved. However, except in be subject to collapse into lower chambers. the case of deliberate burials by Neanderthals and Cro- Magnons of relatively recent times, complete or partially 3. Decalcifi cation of cracked and crushed specimens complete skeletons of early hominids are very rare. Nat- that had been held together by the natural consoli- dant calcium carbonate. 200 Breathing Life into Fossils: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain 4.Mode of recovery of fossils can also damage or sep- nominate” and “the fragmentary, damaged, and delicate arate parts of what was a more complete specimen. appearance of the remaining pieces in the block,” Broom These recovery methods are dynamite blasting by decreed that no preparation was to be done on the block. the lime miners and palaeontologists, drilling and Only after Broom’s death did Robinson use acetic acid breaking of fossil-bearing rock, pick-axe and shovel to extract the remaining parts of the pelvis, the vertebrae in decalcifi ed cave infi ll, chiselling away of brec- and ribs from the block. cia encasing fossil bones and acetic acid cleaning of Broom et al. (1950) mentioned part of a badly cracked and crushed specimens. crushed skull being associated with the skeleton. This specimen must have been Sts 13 recovered on 29th July As with much of the other fauna from the Sterk- 1947 (i.e., two days before the pelvis) and consisting of fontein caves, the Australopithecus specimens usually an elderly adult partial face with most of right dentition consist of either partial or almost complete cranial ma- and part of left dentition. Unfortunately the specimen terial or fragments of cranial and post-cranial material. was never described and is listed as missing by Oakley There are only two partial skeletons, Sts 14 and StW 431 et al. (1977). It would anyway have been impossible to from member 4 (dating to between 2 and 3 million years demonstrate that such a crushed partial maxilla belonged ago) and one virtually complete skeleton, StW 573 from with the Sts 14 partial skeleton even had it been found in member 2 dated to at least 3.3 million years ago. It is of the same block. Firstly, there are many other adult Aus- interest to examine these skeletons in order to determine tralopithecus cranial fossils in the surrounding member whether there are any clues as to how the individuals 4 breccia and any of them could potentially have come came to be in the cave and why it is that all other homi- from the same individual as Sts 14. Secondly, as so much nid specimens are so fragmentary. of the Sts 14 individual is missing (cervical vertebrae, shoulder girdle, arms, hands, feet and both legs apart from the proximal femur fragment and tibia fragment) USTRALOPITHECUS PARTIAL SKELETON A there is no reason to suppose that the torso had an as- STS 14 sociated skull when it reached its fi nal resting place in the cave. This individual is represented by nine thoracic ver- The big question concerns what happened to those tebrae with some rib fragments, six lumbar vertebrae, a missing parts and how is it that just the central part of sacrum and both os coxae forming a virtually complete the body is intact? Theoretically the lime-mining of the pelvis, superior shaft and neck of left femur, and a tibia 1930s could have removed those missing portions but, fragment (Oakley et al., 1977). These elements, with the if so, then at least some parts should have been found exception of the tibia and ribs are described by Robinson during our processing of the lime miners breccia dumps. (1972) and the partial skeleton is illustrated in Howell Many hominid fragments have been discovered during (1965) and Reader (1981). that processing and I found that some of them fi tted with These bones were present in a relatively small block specimens recovered by Broom (Clarke, 1990). One of of breccia that according to Broom et al. (1950) “was the most important of such associations occurred on 29th blasted out on 1st August 1947.” As it was Broom and of August 2002 when I identifi ed a hominid tooth just Robinson who were blasting there at that time we can cleaned out of breccia from the miners dump (D18) as assume that they would have recovered any associated being the missing left upper third molar from Broom’s blocks from the blast.
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