Kromdraai, Gauteng

Kromdraai is a paleoanthropological reference in western Gauteng in South Africa. It belongs, together with a number of other sites under the name Cradle of Humankind ( Cradle of Humankind ) are known, since 1999 a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Kromdraai is located near the town of Krugersdorp. The name is derived by a bend of the meandering Crocodile River from Afrikaans " crooked bend ".

In Kromdraai the type - specimen of Paranthropus robustus was discovered in 1938. In the nearby Coopers Cave also Paranthropus robustus fossils were found by and by early members of the genus Homo and stone tools.

All hominin fossils of reference Kromdraai B were in a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI ) (Munich ) and the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History ( Pretoria) with a CT scanner digitized three-dimensional and the Digitalisiate in a while MPI settled database for scientific purposes made ​​freely available.