JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA—According to a Science News report, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand and his colleagues have reconstructed the partial skull of a Homo naledi child from fossil fragments recovered in a narrow opening about 40 feet from the chamber in South Africa’s Rising Star Cave system where Homo naledi fossils were first found in 2013. Berger suggests the remains were disposed of in the cave between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago, and not washed into the space by water flow or carried there by predators or scavengers. “The case is building for deliberate, ritualized body disposal in caves by Homo naledi,” he said. Given the nickname Leti, from a Setswana word meaning “the lost one,” the child is thought to have been between four and six years of age at the time of death. For more, go to "Homo Naledi," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade.
