The extremely difficult conditions in which University of the Witwatersrand’s (Wits) Professor Lee Berger’s Rising Star team was forced to work, gave rise to the use of space-age technology to map the Dinaledi chamber and Rising Star Cave, in which over 1500 Homo naledi fossils were found.
Ashley Kruger, a PhD candidate in Palaeoanthropology at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits, who was part of Berger’s initial Rising Star Expedition team, roped in the use of high-tech laser scanning, photogrammetry and 3D mapping technology to bring high resolution digital images to Berger and team members on an almost real-time basis in order to make vital decisions regarding the underground excavations.
“This is the first time ever, where multiple digital data imaging collection has been used on such a sale, during a hominin excavation,” says Kruger.
In 2013, after the discovery of the hominin assemblage, Berger put a call out for “skinny” explorers to join him on the expedition to excavate what became known as the Dinaledi Chamber, a cave system near the Sterkfontein Caves, about 40km North West of Johannesburg in South Africa. An all-female team of six “underground astronauts” were selected to undertake the underground excavation, due to the challenge of navigating a 12 meter vertical Chute, and passing through an 18 centimeter gap.
