Wits unveils oldest hominid fossil

The oldest and most complete fossil of an Australopithecus prometheus, named Little Foot owing to the 1994 discovery of four small foot bones by University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Evolutionary Studies Institute Professor Ron Clarke, in the Sterkfontein caves, was unveiled in December. The fossil has been dated about 3.67-million years old. Its discovery is expected to add a wealth of knowledge about the appearance, full skeletal anatomy, limb lengths and locomotor abilities of one of the species of early ancestral relatives, called hominids.