Have you always been fascinated by archaeological discoveries but do not like the idea of getting your hands dirty? Don’t despair. Thanks to Twitter and YouTube, you can now follow all the action of a dig at the Rising Star Cave at the Cradle of Mankind.
The expedition in the Rising Star Cave is being led by palaeontologist Prof. Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, who is also a resident explorer of National Geographic magazine. Regular videos are posted on the magazine’s website www.nationalgeographic.com since it started on 6 November. The effort aims to recover recently discovered fossils of a yet-to-be-identified member of the human family.
Regular tweets from Prof. Berger’s Twitter account @LeeRberger will keep you up to date with the latest happenings. He was quick to announce the 100th hominin fossil to be collected from the cave on Thursday with a “100th fossil collected – watching it being bagged now!”
More tweets about the expedition on Twitter can be read by using the hashtag #risingstarexpedition. Daily blogs can be read at http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/tag/rising-star-expedition/