The Florisbad archaeological and paleontological site is a provincial heritage site in Brandfort in the Free State province of South Africa.
In 1997 it was described in the Government Gazette as
The Florisbad fossil site consists of a sequence of Quaternary deposits associated with a thermal spring, situated 45 km NNW of Bloemfontein in central South Africa (28°46’S, 26°04’E). There are two kinds of fossil context at Florisbad: naturallyaccumulated vertebrate fossil material from spring sedimentary contexts, which includes the human skull fragment, and archaeological remains from old land surfaces. The material from spring contexts represents mainly the remains of ancient carnivore hunting and scavenging around palaeo-waterholes associated with the spring. Spring sediments intrude into the horizontal or sub-horizontal deposits, which, in some cases, represent stable land surfaces. These land surfaces are, to a greater or lesser degree, disturbed by post-depositional spring action and saturation during times of a higher water table...The Florisbad fossil locality is internationally known for producing a pre-modern human skull, Middle Pleistocene fossil vertebrates and Middle Stone Age artefacts...Famous quotes containing the word site:
“That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)