Little Foot
nearly complete Australopithecus fossil skeleton found in 1994–1998 in the cave system of Sterkfontein, South Africa
"Little Foot" (Stw 573) is the nickname given to a nearly complete Australopithecus fossil skeleton found in 1994 in the cave system of Sterkfontein, South Africa.
The skeleton was originally nicknamed "Little Foot" in 1995 when four ankle bones in a museum collection were sufficient to ascertain that the individual had been able to walk upright. The remainder of the skeleton was subsequently located in the cave from which the ankle bones had been collected.
Because the bones were completely embedded in concrete-like rock, their extremely difficult and tedious extraction took around 15 years. The bones proved to be the most complete skeleton of the early hominin lineage leading to humans, with 90% of the body being recovered.
Dating of the specimen has proved controversial, with estimates ranging from 2.2 to 3.67 million years old, and its taxonomic placement is likewise disputed.
Discovery
Four ankle bones of this specimen were collected in 1980 but were unidentified among numerous other mammal bones. Only after 1992, on initiative by Phillip Tobias, a large rock was blown up in the cave that contained an unusual accumulation of fossils. The fossils recovered were taken from the cave and scrutinized thoroughly by paleoanthropologist Ronald Clarke.
In 1994 while searching through museum boxes labelled 'Cercopithecoids' containing fossil fragments, Ronald Clarke identified several that were unmistakably hominin.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Little Foot” as nearly complete Australopithecus fossil skeleton found in 1994–1998 in the cave system of Sterkfontein, South Africa. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as nearly complete Australopithecus fossil skeleton found in 1994–1998 in the cave system of Sterkfontein, South Africa. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q278863. Authority coordinates are -26.016, 27.734. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 1995, 1980 and 1992.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Little Foot” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.