Return to the Taung cave paradigm.

Abstract

The Taung hominin fossil was recovered in 1924 during quarry operations in the tufa formations of the Buxton Limeworks. Reconstructions of the depositional environment of the juvenile Australopithecus skull have concentrated on the types of caves that form within the tufa. Hopley et al. (Am J Phys Anthropol 151 (2013) 316-324) proposed a new model in which the pink carbonate deposits, in which many of the Taung fossils are found, formed as open terrestrial pedogenic deposits. The objective here is to challenge that notion. Observations of the depositional environments at Taung are based upon the University of the Witwatersrand paleontological excavations at the Buxton Limeworks from 1988 to 1993, and subsequent laboratory analysis of the fossils and sediments. Hopley et al. (Am J Phys Anthropol 151 (2013) 316-324) conflate numerous distinct outcroppings of the pink carbonates as a single "unit." The excavations revealed numerous fossiliferous deposits that differ greatly in taphonomic origins and formation processes, and that cannot be considered a "unit" despite the commonality of pink carbonates. There are deposits that fit the model proposed by Hopley et al. (Am J Phys Anthropol 151 (2013) 316-324), but they are not the ones that yielded the most significant fossils. Most of the fossiliferous deposits, including those most likely to have yielded the Taung hominin, are best reconstructed as being of karst origins.