The Dart Deposits of the Buxton Limeworks, Taung, South Africa, and the context of the Taung Australopithecus fossil

ABSTRACT

The geologic, environmental, and taphonomic context of the Taung Australopithecus africanus skull has been the subject of speculation and sporadic research since its first publication. In order to refine our contextual knowledge of this important hominin fossil, systematic excavations of the Taung fossil site at the Buxton Limeworks, in the Taung district of what is now the North West Province of South Africa, were conducted from 1988 to 1993. The excavations began on the Hrdlička pinnacle, where Aleš Hrdlička had found fossiliferous deposits in 1925. A separate set of deposits, closer to the reconstructed position of the 1924 Australopithecus discovery and more consistent with the historical record of the Taung discovery, was uncovered on the quarry floor, 42 m southwest of and 6 m lower than the nearest Hrdlička deposits. The fossils of these three distinct deposits, known as the ‘Dart deposits,’ are sparsely distributed, representing different taphonomic conditions and most likely older than most previous discoveries. There are 16 cercopithecid fossils and four bovid fossils, along with eggshell, turtle shell, brachiopods, and reed casts. They provide the most immediate context for the depositional conditions of the Taung Australopithecus juvenile.

Citation for this article: McKee J. K., and K. L. Kuykendall. 2016. The Dart deposits of the Buxton Limeworks, Taung, South Africa, and the context of the Taung Australopithecus fossil. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2015.1054937.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the late P. V. Tobias for being Director of this project for its first 4 years. The senior author thanks M. Touissant for being the field director in 1988 and W.J. Scott and L.R. Berger for being assistant field directors in subsequent years. Countless students from the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as students from universities in South Africa, the U.S.A., and the U.K. participated in the excavations. J. Adams kindly identified the bovid teeth. D. de Ruiter helped with the identification of the eggshells and served in the field as well. J. Moggi-Cecchi supplied the Cipriani photo and notes. A special thanks to the people of Buxton and Taung. Portions of this research were funded by Centro Studi e Ricerche Ligabue, the LSB Leakey Foundation, the Foundation for Research Development (South Africa), the National Science Foundation, and the Paleoanthropology and Evolutionary Ecology Research fund.

Submitted December 10, 2014; revisions submitted May 5, 2015; accepted May 8, 2015.

Handling editor: Blaire van Valkenburgh.