Scientists from South Africa, the U.S., Australia, Canada, and Switzerland are camped out on a farm outside Johannesburg, recovering and studying a cache of ancient hominid fossils.
None of them would be there if it weren’t for the skills of South Africa’s caving community.
Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg hired geoologist and caver Pedro Boshoff to begin exploring the caves around the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Site. When Pedro reached passages he couldn’t fit in, he in turn brought Steve Tucker and Rick Hunter into the project.
Steve and Rick were out on a fossil exploration mission in September, when they squeezed down a 20-meter vertical crack and were stopped in their tracks by the unmistakable sight of human remains. Well, close to human. They could tell these were the kinds of fossils Berger had directed them to search for.
Now they find themselves on leave from their day jobs and running lights, camera, and communications lines into a cave 30 meters below ground, and being on hand to guide, support (and if needed, rescue) a hand-picked team of scientists painstakingly excavating the precious fossils.
The skills and knowledge developed in their countless hours of exploring are now one of the most critical elements of a major scientific expedition.
“In my wildest dreams I would never have thought caving would take me to what is happening here,” Steve said.
With Lee Berger, Gregg Treinish and other scientists committed to working with adventuring groups like cavers, hikers, and mountain climbers, perhaps these are exactly the kind of wildest dreams the next generation will have.
[UPDATED 11/24/2013: This post initially described the cavers as finding the fossils during a recreational caving trip.]