Francis Thackeray

• PhD (Yale) MSc, BSc Hons (University of Cape Town)
• Honorary Research Associate at University of the Witwatersrand

A debate has developed with regard to geological ages of hominin fossils attributed to Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus prometheus in South African Plio‐Pleistocene cave deposits. For the Sterkfontein caves (Members 2 and 4), cosmogenic nuclide isochron ( ¹⁰ Be/ ²⁶ Al) dating has yielded age estimates ranging from 3.4 to 3.7 million...

A “Great Debate” has developed regarding geological ages of fossils attributed to Australopithecus in South Africa. In the case of Sterkfontein (Member 4), one camp led by Granger (using 10Be/26Al cosmogenic data) places them between 3.4 and 3.7 million years ago (Ma). A second camp led by Frost (using biochronology of cercopithecids) dates them be...

A study is undertaken using anatomical measurements of specimens attributed to six species of Geospiza, the ground finches from the Galápagos archipelago. In a demonstration of method, a probabilistic approach associated with “sigma taxonomy” is adopted to assess the probability that pairs of specimens are or are not conspecific. We use a definitio...

Reference: Thackeray, F. and Dykes, S. 2023. Biochronological ages for South African Australopithecus and a Plio-Pleistocene African hominin lineage (1.5 – 3.5 Ma)? The Digging Stick 40 (1):11-12. Published by the South African Archaeological Society. In the context of biochronology and measurements of hominin lower first molars (MD mesiodistal an...

The juvenile mandible is important in the investigation of ontogenetic and evolutionary changes among early hominins. We revisit the mandibular symphysis in juvenile specimens of Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus with two main contributions. First, we employ, for the first time, methods of computational anatomy to model complex s...

Ontogeny provides critical information about the evolutionary history of early hominin adult morphology. We describe fossils from the southern African sites of Kromdraai and Drimolen that provide insights into early craniofacial development in the Pleistocene robust australopith Paranthropus robustus. We show that while most distinctive robust cran...

The ages of South African Plio-Pleistocene hominin fossils ( Australopithecus africanus , A. prometheus and early Homo ) are in question. Cosmogenic dates for Australopithecus from Sterkfontein Member 4 published by Granger et al (2022) range between 3.4 and 3.7 Ma. By contrast, biochronological age estimates for this genus, as published by Frost e...

Morphometric statistics (“log sem”) based on standard errors of the m-coefficient (sem) associated with general equations of the form y = mx + c have been calculated from least squares regression analyses of cranial measurements of two chimpanzee species: Pan troglodytes (currently distributed north of the Congo river) and P.paniscus (the bonobo) d...

Tyrannosaurus was a massive carnivorous dinosaur which existed for roughly 2 million years in North America prior to its extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period. It was recently proposed by Gregory Paul and colleagues that fossil specimens historically attributed to the species T. rex represent three species, not one. This conclusion reflect...

The Kromdraai archaeological site is located in a fossiliferous paleokarst situated in the UNESCO World Heritage Site referred to as the “Cradle of Humankind” in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. Kromdraai is noteworthy because it features among the three southern African early hominin-bearing sites considered to represent distinct temporal per...

In this review of a morphometric technique, conspecific pairwise comparisons are made between craniodental measurements of adult hominoid specimens (representing extant and extinct species), in least squares linear regression analyses which are associated with equations of the form y = mx + c , where m is the slope and c is the intercept. The log o...

The juvenile mandible is important in the investigation of ontogenetic and evolutionary changes among early hominins. To more accurately describe complex shape variations, for the first time advanced methods from computational anatomy, and new fossil evidence are used to revisit the ontogeny of the mandibular symphysis in Australopithecus africanus...

The juvenile mandible is important in the investigation of ontogenetic and evolutionary changes among early hominins. We revisit the mandibular symphysis in juvenile specimens of Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus with two main contributions. First, we employ, for the first time, methods of computational anatomy to model complex s...

The origins of Homo, as well as the diversity and biogeographic distribution of early Homo species, remain critical outstanding issues in paleoanthropology. Debates about the recognition of early Homo, first appearance dates, and taxonomic diversity within Homo are particularly important for determining the role that southern African taxa may have...

The Kromdraai site in South Africa has yielded numerous early hominin fossils since 1938. As a part of recent excavations within Unit P, a largely complete early hominin calcaneus (KW 6302) was discovered. Due to its role in locomotion, the calcaneus has the potential to reveal important form/function relationships. Here, we describe KW 6302 and an...

South Africa and East Africa each have a rich palaeoanthropological heritage, but the taxonomy of fossil hominins from these regions is controversial. In this study, two morphometric methods related to the quantification of variability in morphology have been applied to pairwise comparisons of linear measurements of hominoid crania and mandibles. T...

Insights into potential differences among the bony labyrinths of Plio-Pleistocene hominins may inform their evolutionary histories and sensory ecologies. We use four recently-discovered bony labyrinths from the site of Kromdraai to significantly expand the sample for Paranthropus robustus. Diffeomorphometry, which provides detailed information abou...

Reconstruction of the locomotor repertoire of the australopiths (Australopithecus and Paranthropus) has progressively integrated information from the mechanosensitive internal structure of the appendicular skeleton. Recent investigations showed that the arrangement of the trabecular network at the femoral head center is biomechanically compatible w...

Before 2014, the Plio-Pleistocene locality of Kromdraai B has yielded the type specimen of Paranthropus robustus, as well as 27 additional fossil hominin specimens. Since 2014, we excavated the earliest known infilling of the Kromdraai cave system in a previously unexplored area.

Despite its potential to unravel past behaviors, statistical testing of spatial patterns within early hominin-bearing fossil assemblages has generally been overlooked. For instance, previous investigations of spatial patterning within sites from the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage area (Gauteng Province, South Africa) (with notable exceptions of...

Late Quaternary micromammals and the precipitation history of the southern Cape, South Africa — comment on the published paper by Faith et al., Quaternary Research (2019), Vol. 91, 848–860 - Volume 95 - J. Francis Thackeray

Objectives The Pleistocene taxon Paranthropus robustus was established in 1938 following the discovery at Kromdraai B, South Africa, of the partial cranium TM 1517a and associated mandible TM 1517b. Shortly thereafter, a distal humerus (TM 1517g), a proximal ulna (TM 1517e), and a distal hallucial phalanx (TM 1517k) were collected nearby at the sit...

This study is an extension of that which was undertaken by Balzeau et al. and published in this journal (2017), to re-examine the BH1 cranium which was initially described as Homo rhodesiensis in 1921, but more recently regarded as H. heidelbergensis. It is compared to other Pleistocene specimens of Homo. Balzeau et al. (2017) examined various cran...

Pickering et al. (Nature 2018;565:226–229) utilised calcium carbonate flowstone deposits (i.e. speleothems) from eight Pliocene and Pleistocene South African Cradle of Humankind cave sites to propose that biases were created within the fossil record due to absent clastic sedimentation phases during wet periods, when caves were closed and only spele...

Linguistic and ethological data regarding elephants are examined in relation to southern African rock art, with special reference to the behaviour of these large tusked animals which become especially dangerous and aggressive when wounded, as in the case also of roan (hippotragine) antelope which have long curved horns. In this paper I attempt to d...

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/28129 Wonderkrater in the Limpopo Province in South Africa is a late Quaternary archaeological site with peat deposits extending back more than 30 000 years before the present. Palaeoclimatic indices based on multivariate analysis of pollen spectra reflect a decline in temperature identifiable with the You...

Nursing is pivotal in the social and biological evolution of hominins, but to date, early-life behavior among hominin lineages is a matter of debate. The calcium isotopic compositions (d 44/42 Ca) of tooth enamel can provide dietary information on this period. Here, we measure the d 44/42 Ca values in spatially located microsized regions in tooth e...

Studies of the australopith (Australopithecus and Paranthropus) proximal femur have increasingly integrated information from the local arrangement of the cortical and cancellous bone to allow functional-biomechanical inferences on the locomotor behavioral patterns. In Australopithecus africanus and Para-nthropus robustus, the cancellous bone organi...

Sex differences in behavioral and neural characteristics can be caused by cultural influences but also by sex-based differences in neurophysiological and sensorimotor features. Since signal-response systems influence decision-making, cooperative and collaborative behaviors, the anatomical or physiological bases for any sex-based difference in senso...

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit paleontologist, priest, and philosopher. In the figures published in articles in 1943 and 1951, he attempted to draw a “plausible schematic reconstruction of the natural connections between fossil men” and a “phyletic composition of the human group”. I draw attention to Teilhard's reference to Eoanthro...

SKX 1084 is an isolated partial patella from Swartkrans Member 2, South Africa, attributed to a small-bodied Paranthropus robustus. This study provides complementary information on its outer conformation and, for the first time for a fossil hominin patella, documents its inner structure in the perspective of adding biomechanically-related evidence...

Phillip Vallentine Tobias (1925–2012) was a South African paleoanthropologist who made major contributions to the study of human evolution through his work on hominids from both South Africa and East Africa. Tobias was invited by the Leakeys to work on fossils from Olduvai Gorge, including crania of Australopithecus boisei (“Zinjanthropus”) and Hom...

Professor Phillip Vallentine Tobias was an outstanding South African paleoanthropologist who made major contributions to the study of human evolution and who was also a prominent objector to the apartheid system in South Africa. Among his published works (numbering more than a thousand), Tobias (1967) described in meticulous detail a 1.8‐million‐ye...

Objectives: Several studies have investigated potential functional signals in the trabecular structure of the primate proximal humerus but with varied success. Here, we apply for the first time a "whole-epiphyses" approach to analysing trabecular bone in the humeral head with the aim of providing a more holistic interpretation of trabecular variat...

Bolts Farm Cave System(Cradle of Humankind-South Africa) From 1936 to 2018

Within the past 80 years, the Kromdraai site in South Africa has provided a diverse Early Pleistocene fauna (notably bovids, carnivores, primates, large rodents, birds, proboscidea). Since 2014, the Kromdraai bone accumulation has been the focus of intensive fieldwork that demonstrated that the site is much larger than previously recognised. In the...

The Primates from BPB (Bolts farm Cave System, South Africa)

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy). This article has been retracted at the request of the co-Editors-in-Chief and the authors. The Results and Discussion of this article duplicate significant parts of book chapter “A revised stratigraphy of Kromdraai”,...

Assessment of global endocranial morphology and regional neuroanatomical changes in early hominins is critical for the reconstruction of evolutionary trajectories of cerebral regions in the human lineage. Early evidence of cortical reorganization in specific local areas (e.g. visual cortex, inferior frontal gyrus) is perceptible in the non-human So...

The taxonomic attribution of isolated hominin distal humeri has been a matter of uncertainty and disagreement notwithstanding their relative abundance in the fossil record. Four taxonomically-based morphotypes, respectively representing P. boisei, P. robustus, non-erectus early Homo and H. erectus, have been identified based on the cross-sectional...

Objectives: The aim of this study is to compare the degree and patterning of inter- and intra-individual metameric variation in South African australopiths, early Homo and modern humans. Metameric variation likely reflects developmental and taxonomical issues, and could also be used to infer ecological and functional adaptations. However, its patt...

Morphometric and genetic analyses of a variety of living and fossil taxa support the use of a probabilistic definition of a species in the context of ‘sigma taxonomy’ (where sigma represents ‘S’ for spectrum), in contrast to alpha taxonomy, for which boundaries discriminating species are presumed to be distinct, thus accommodating only rigid, ‘eith...

Despite the abundance of well-preserved crania and natural endocasts in the South African Plio- Pleistocene cercopithecoid record, which provide direct information relevant to the evolution of their endocranial characteristics, few studies have attempted to characterize patterns of external brain morphology in this highly successful primate Superfa...

About 60 years ago, a South African anatomist, Joseph Weiner, published a book entitled The Piltdown Forgery, exposing a hoax that had been perpetrated about 100 years ago at the site of Piltdown in Sussex, England. The announcement of 'Piltdown Man' - classified as Eoanthropus dawsoni and believed to be a hominid apparently associated with Pleisto...

One of the major issues in paleoneurology concerns the timing and patterning of human brain evolution, notably when and how a derived human-like endocranial morphology emerged within the hominin lineage [1]. Since morphological variation within and between paleodemes constitutes the substrate upon which natural selection acts, assessment of the cer...

South Africa has a rich palaeo-anthropological heritage. The very first Plio-Pleistocene specimen of Australopithecus, from the site of Taung, was described by Raymond Dart in 1925. In 1936 the first australopithecine was discovered at the site of Sterkfontein. Thereafter there was an increase in the number of hominin specimens attributed to Austra...

The Cradle of Humankind in South Africa, recognized as World Heritage by UNESCO since 1999, contains fossil sites which have yielded hominid remains and/or non-human primates (Cercopithecoidea). Robert Broom was the first to prospect for fossils at Bolt's Farm Cave System (or BFCS), and this since 1936. Research only became regular in 2006 with the...

Dirks et al report on the taphonomy of bones from the Dinaledi Chamber in the Rising Star cave complex, situated in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa. Fossils of Homo naledi have been recovered from this chamber. An age estimate for the Homo naledi fossils, based on morphometric analyses of crania, is in the order of 2 million years, 3 althou...

The Plio-Pleistocene locality of Kromdraai B has yielded the type specimen of Paranthropus robustus, as well as 27 additional fossil hominin specimens. In a number of both cranial and dental features, the states shown by the Kromdraai Paranthropus are more conservative when compared to the more derived conditions displayed by both South African con...

Boomplaas Cave is situated near the town of Oudtshoorn in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. It was excavated by Hilary Deacon in the 1970s, yielding not only Late Quaternary artefacts that were of archaeological importance but also fossils of rodents and insectivores (analysed by Margaret Avery) as well as bovids and equids (analysed by Rich...

Tracking the early appearance in the hominin fossil record of the derived Homo-like neuroanatomical pattern should contribute to the understanding of the inter-taxic evolutionary relationships within the human lineage. Paleoneurology has recently enlarged its traditional investigative toolkit by integrating methods of high-resolution imaging and 3D...

Topographic variation in bone organization beneath the tibial plateau reveals structural coherence in extant primates to the locomotionrelated loads experienced at this site. Within the limits imposed by some developmental and rheological constraints, the patella, which actively takes part into the complex dynamics at the knee joint, should similar...

We explore if taxonomic analysis of archaeological mollusc assemblages can be used to reconstruct Late Pleistocene (MIS 5–3) coastal environments at Klasies River in South Africa. To obtain a balanced reconstruction, we analyse the large molluscs separately from the so-called incidentals, the small mollusc species. Based on modern mollusc habitat p...

Dans cet article, nous décrivons la méthodologie développée pour numériser un site de fouilles d’un très ancien fossile d’homininé (StW 573, Little Foot), découvert dans les grottes de Sterkfontein, en Afrique du Sud. Nous détaillons les aspects pratiques d’acquisition de vues 3D avec deux scanners 3D laser et la chaîne de traitement des données br...

Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province (South Africa) is one of few sites in the subcontinent where fossil pollen has been preserved in Holocene cave floor deposits. With the exception of biogenic deposits and stalagmite layers near the cave opening, older material has yielded no pollen. Pollen recorded in previous and new samples from late Pleist...

Ungulate and small mammalian fauna have been recovered from Holocene deposits at Wonderwerk Cave, in the interior of South Africa, in the area of excavation 1. Statistical analyses of relative abundances of rodents and insectivores indicate that conditions were warm (between 19.1 and 19.3 °C) and very dry in the early Holocene in the Wonderwerk pal...

Studies of sensory capacities in past life forms have offered new insights into their adaptations and lifeways. Audition is particularly amenable to study in fossils because it is strongly related to physical properties that can be approached through their skeletal structures. We have studied the anatomy of the outer and middle ear in the early hom...

Thackeray has previously explored the possibility of using a morphometric approach to quantify the "amount" of variation within species and to assess probabilities of conspecificity when two fossil specimens are compared, instead of "pigeon-holing" them into discrete species. In an attempt to obtain a statistical (probabilistic) definition of a spe...

http://www.franceinter.fr/emission-le-zoom-de-la-redaction-dans-les-pas-de-little-foot

Changes in lifestyles and body weight affected mammal life-history evolution but little is known about how they shaped species' sensory systems. Since auditory sensitivity impacts communication tasks and environmental acoustic awareness, it may have represented a deciding factor during mammal evolution, including apes. Here, we statistically measur...

Corbey Raymond . The Metaphysics of Apes: Negotiating the Animal-Human Boundary. x+227 pages, 7 illustrations. 2005. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press; 0-521-83683-2 £40 & $65, 0-521-54533-1 paperback £14.99 & $23.99. - Volume 80 Issue 308 - J.F. Thackeray

Here we describe the methodology we used to digitize an excavation site of a very ancient fossil hominid in South Africa, which has been recently dated using cosmogenic techniques. We detail the practical aspects of acquiring 3D views with a laser range scanner and the post-processing computer graphics pipeline required to obtain an accurate 3D rep...

The site of Kromdraai in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site is well known as the locality at which Robert Broom and Gert Terblanche discovered the type specimen of Paranthropus robustus (TM 1517). Eight other hominin individuals have been discovered at Kromdraai B. In 2008 a new research program (funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Af...

In 1979 a small stone slab bearing the engraved image of a zebra was excavated from Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province, from levels radio-carbon dated to circa 4000 BP. The dolomitic slab is broken, perhaps deliberately, and retains only the hind quarters and rump of the zebra. Present on the rump are several fine incised lines that have been...