Gladysvale Cave

Excavations in front of the cave entrance

The Gladysvale Cave is a Pleistocene fossil finding site in the province of Gauteng (South Africa), about 13 kilometers east of Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Swartkrans and about 45 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg. It belongs to the farm Uitkomst and is situated in the John Nash Nature Reserve, a designated point Cradle of Humankind larger reserve. The fossils come from different ancient soil layers, where one initially attributed to an age from 1.7 to 2.5 million years. Subsequent analyzes revealed that there are younger deposits.

The fossil deposit was in a dreikammerigen cave system that had formed in a silica - rich dolomite deposits. She was known since the mid- 1930s as a location of fossils and was visited occasionally by paleoanthropologists.

After Lee Berger began systematic excavations in 1991, where among other things, several teeth have been discovered that Australopithecus africanus were attributed to and are probably about 2.4 to 2 million years old: as on April 5, 1992, a left third premolar (archive number GVH -1) and on 12 April 1992, a right second molar ( GVH -2). In addition, after recovery of thousands of fossil animal bones, several dozen species were detected on the basis of which we also determine the age of the deposit was made; among these species were related to the hyenas of dogs and big cats, numerous bovid ( Bovidae ) and types of pigs ( Suidae ), horses, elephants and small mammals. Several non- hominin primates have been discovered, including monkeys and baboons relatives.

Among the discovered in younger layers Fund finds include a dated to an age of at least 780,000 years biface and finger bones of a 600,000 year old individual of the genus Homo.

The name of the cave dates back to Gladys Norton, whose family early 20th century held the rights to the mining industry in this Gladysvale mentioned grounds.

Environment of the cave

Visitor access to the excavation site

Fossil hyena