Fossil Hunting at Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa

The Sterkfontein Caves are a network of dolomitic limestone caverns about 50 km northwest of Johannesburg, set within the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since Robert Broom recovered the adult Australopithecus africanus skull "Mrs Ples" here in 1947, the caves have produced more early hominin fossils than any other locality on Earth, and excavation continues today, with the near-complete Australopithecus skeleton known as Little Foot still partly embedded in the rock of Member 2.

The caves are owned and managed for research by the University of the Witwatersrand. Hour-long guided tours descend through the working caves to the active dig sites. Visitors are issued helmets and headlamps and walk past the Silberberg Grotto where Little Foot lies in situ. New boardwalks installed during the 2020s renovation give visitors a clear view onto the actual excavation faces.

This guide covers what you'll see, how to reach the caves, and the rules governing one of paleoanthropology's best-known localities.

Location and Directions

Sterkfontein lies on the R563 Hekpoort Road in Gauteng, about a one-hour drive from central Johannesburg or Pretoria.

Directions to Sterkfontein Caves

From Johannesburg, take the N14 highway west, exit onto the R563 north, and follow signs through the Cradle of Humankind to Sterkfontein. The site has secure parking, a ticket office, on-site café, and the Robert Broom Museum building. Hours are typically 09:00–17:00 daily (closed Christmas Day). Tours run on the hour and the last departs around 16:00. The Maropeng Visitor Centre, the official interpretive hub for the World Heritage Site, is 10 km away and is best paired with a Sterkfontein cave tour as a half- or full-day visit.

All cave visits are guided, independent entry to the caves is not permitted. Tours descend approximately 60 m below the surface through narrow passages with low ceilings, slippery steps, and constant water seepage. Comfortable closed shoes are essential and the tour is unsuitable for people with severe claustrophobia or limited mobility.

What Fossils You'll See

The Sterkfontein cave fill records hominin and faunal accumulation between roughly 3.7 and 2.1 million years ago, spanning the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene of southern Africa. Over 800 hominin specimens and roughly half a million identified bones of other vertebrates have been recovered from the site over more than nine decades of work, making Sterkfontein one of the most prolific paleoanthropological localities in the world.

The cave tour itself is the main fossil experience. Visitors descend through a series of natural cave passages, narrow squeezes, low ceilings, and steep stairs cut through dolomitic limestone, to a series of stations where guides interpret what is preserved in the rock around them. The tour passes breccia (cemented cave-fill sediment) exposed in walls and ceilings, fossil-bearing flowstones with characteristic banded calcite, and the active dig faces in Member 4 and Member 5 where excavation is ongoing. The most-photographed station is the viewing platform overlooking the Silberberg Grotto, where the near-complete Little Foot skeleton (specimen number StW 573, assigned to Australopithecus prometheus) was excavated over more than 20 years. Portions of the Little Foot skeleton remain embedded in the grotto floor in the position they were found, visitors look down onto an articulated hominin foot, leg, and pelvis still partly cemented into the breccia.

Above ground, an outdoor walkway passes the historic trenches where Robert Broom recovered "Mrs Ples", Australopithecus africanus specimen Sts 5, the most famous australopithecine skull in southern African paleoanthropology, in 1947. Interpretive panels at each station show where major specimens originated, including the partial endocast (Sts 60) and the famous Australopithecus africanus mandibles. Many of the original fossils are now curated at the Wits University Evolutionary Studies Institute in Johannesburg. The Maropeng visitor centre 10 kilometres away displays high-quality casts of all the headline specimens.

Faunal fossils recovered from the same deposits include cercopithecid monkeys (Parapapio jonesi, Parapapio whitei, the long-faced Cercopithecoides williamsi). Sabre-toothed cats (Megantereon cultridens, Dinofelis barlowi). Spotted, brown, and giant short-faced hyenas. Antelope and small bovids including the early kudu Tragelaphus and Aepyceros. Early equids. Carnivores including the leopard Panthera pardus and the now-extinct giant cheetah Acinonyx pardinensis. And a wide range of small carnivores, rodents, and bats. Many of these accumulated as leopard or large-carnivore kills dropped into cave openings, taphonomic work by C. K. Brain established that many of the early hominin fossils may themselves represent leopard prey rather than deliberate cave burials.

"Staff members keep the fossils at the place where they were discovered, allowing visitors to see the fossils in their original geological context." Wits University Sterkfontein Caves

Geologic History

The Sterkfontein caves formed in the Malmani Subgroup dolomitic limestones, Precambrian carbonate rocks laid down roughly 2.3 billion years ago in shallow marine settings on the proto-Kaapvaal Craton. The dolomite was buried and remained largely stable through the Phanerozoic, with karst groundwater dissolving cave passages along bedding planes and joints over millions of years. By the Pliocene, a complex underground network of caves, shafts, and chambers had developed at depths ranging from 5 to 60 metres below the modern surface.

Beginning in the late Pliocene about 4 million years ago, surface erosion progressively opened the karst system to the surface, producing vertical entrance shafts at scattered points across the Sterkfontein outcrop. These open shafts and sinkholes acted as natural sediment and bone traps. Bones, bats, hyrax dung, plant debris, soil, and occasional hominin remains fell or were dragged through the openings and accumulated in the cave chambers below as cone-shaped sediment piles. Calcite-saturated groundwater dripping through the karst cemented these accumulations into the hard, concrete-like breccia that fills the cave today.

The cave fill is divided into six stratigraphic units, Members 1 through 6, that span from the late Pliocene at the base (about 4 million years ago) to the late Pleistocene at the top (about 250,000 years ago). The Silberberg Grotto, where Little Foot was recovered, contains the oldest fossil-bearing deposits and has been dated to about 3.67 million years using cosmogenic isochron burial dating, making Little Foot older than the famous Ethiopian "Lucy" specimen (about 3.2 million years) and one of the oldest known articulated hominins. Member 4, the source of Mrs Ples and most of the A. africanus specimens, dates to about 2.6 to 2.0 million years ago. Member 5 contains stone tools and may record the earliest hominin material culture in southern Africa.

Cycles of sediment infill, calcite cementation, partial collapse, and re-erosion produced the complex stratigraphy and articulated-in-breccia preservation seen in the cave today. The dolomite roof has been mined for lime since the late 19th century, and it was a lime mining operation in 1936 that first cracked open the cave to scientific attention.

Excavation in the modern sense began with Robert Broom's arrival at Sterkfontein in 1936 and his recovery of the first adult Australopithecus africanus fragment in 1937. Broom's discovery of "Mrs Ples" in 1947 brought the site to international fame. Phillip Tobias took over the project in the 1960s and ran it for more than three decades. Under Tobias, Sterkfontein became the type site for southern African Pliocene paleoanthropology. Ronald Clarke's recognition in 1994 of articulated foot bones in storage boxes labelled "monkey," followed by his decades-long extraction of the rest of the Little Foot skeleton from concrete-hard breccia in the Silberberg Grotto, is one of the most painstaking excavations in the history of paleoanthropology. Clarke and his team published the full description of Little Foot in 2018 after more than 20 years of preparation.

How Sterkfontein Came to Be Protected

The caves were declared a National Monument in 1970 and a Provincial Heritage Site in 1999. Sterkfontein is part of the broader Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa serial property, inscribed by UNESCO in 1999 (Site #915) and extended in 2005 to include additional caves at Bolt's Farm, Cooper's Cave, Drimolen, Gladysvale, Gondolin, Haasgat, Plovers Lake, Swartkrans, Coopers, and Wonderwerk. The site is held by the University of the Witwatersrand under heritage protection and the National Heritage Resources Act (Act No. 25 of 1999). All hominin and faunal fossils in South Africa are protected, and collection at Sterkfontein is restricted to Wits University researchers under SAHRA permit.

Collecting Rules & Regulations

Is Fossil Collecting Allowed?

No. All hominin and faunal fossils in South Africa are protected under the National Heritage Resources Act. Collection at Sterkfontein is restricted to Wits University researchers.

Key Points:

Entry only on a guided cave tour booked at the ticket office
No collecting, hammering, or removal of anything from the cave
Touching fossils or breccia walls is prohibited
Photography is allowed without flash on most tours. Commercial filming requires permission
Notable finds anywhere in South Africa must be reported to SAHRA

Sterkfontein Caves Fossil Site Guide