Background
The skull was found in the 1950s on the surface of an erosion gully, a dry channel bed of the Vlekpoort River, near Hofmeyr, a small town in Eastern Cape, South Africa. No other bones or archaeological artefacts were found in the vicinity at the time of the skull's discovery. The skull is one of only a few African specimens of early modern humans dated over 30,000. Others are much more recent, dated to around 20,000 years ago.
In the 1990s, Alan Morris of the University of Cape Town noticed the skull in the Port Elizabeth Museum. He later showed it to Frederick E. Grine, an anthropologist and anatomist at State University of New York at Stony Brooky. Grine then led a detailed study of the skull.
Read more about this topic: Hofmeyr Skull
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