Plovers Lake 1.6

Plovers Lake Cave is a fossil-bearing breccia filled cavity in South Africa. The cave is located about 4 km Southeast of the well known South African hominid-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Kromdraai and about 36 km Northwest of the City of Johannesburg, South Africa. Plovers Lake has been declared a South African National Heritage Site.History of InvestigationsPlovers Lake had two periods of excavation. One in the late 1980s and early 1990s by C.K. "Bob" Brain and Francis Thackeray of the then Transvaal Museum (now known as the Northern Flagship Institute) in what is known as the "Outer Deposits", and the second by Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand and Steve Churchill of Duke University in 2000 – 2004 in the "Inner Deposits".Recovered FossilsMany thousands of fossils were found by both teams. In the Outer Deposits, Brain and Thakeray discovered a very fine fossil baboon that had survived a leopard or saber-toothed cat attack as was evidenced by a healed wound over the eye. They also discovered many other animals and some indeterminate stone tools. No hominid fossils were discovered.