Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 328, Issue 5975, Pages 205-208Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1184950
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Funding
- Palaeontological Scientific Trust (PAST)
- Institute for Human Evolution
- University of the Witwatersrand
- School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand
- AfricaArray
- France-SA
- Khure Africa project
- LLNL GEO-CAMS
- US-NSF [EAR-0345895]
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- UNSW Faculty of Medicine
- ARC [DP0877603]
- Liverpool University
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We describe the geological, geochronological, geomorphological, and faunal context of the Malapa site and the fossils of Australopithecus sediba. The hominins occur with a macrofauna assemblage that existed in Africa between 2.36 and 1.50 million years ago (Ma). The fossils are encased in water-laid, clastic sediments that were deposited along the lower parts of what is now a deeply eroded cave system, immediately above a flowstone layer with a U-Pb date of 2.026 +/- 0.021 Ma. The flowstone has a reversed paleomagnetic signature and the overlying hominin-bearing sediments are of normal polarity, indicating deposition during the 1.95- to 1.78-Ma Olduvai Subchron. The two hominin specimens were buried together in a single debris flow that lithified soon after deposition in a phreatic environment inaccessible to scavengers.
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