NEWS

The NRF 2026 Science Team Award recognises HERI’s African-led excellence and transforming human origins research.

In the first comprehensive review of Paranthropus in more than three decades, a new book outlines the latest research, including contributions from HERI, to uncover new evidence around the extinct prehuman genus and its legacy.

HERI’s spotlight shines on archaeology master’s student Keane Wanza, who investigates field samples from Ethiopia using palaeoproteomics, a rapidly advancing field within palaeoanthropology, to investigate early hominin evolution.

When HERI’s Precious Chiwara-Maenzanise was invited to review The Untold History and Prehistory of African Indigenous Palaeontology, she found its themes connected deeply to her own career. In this article, she reflects on the impact of the review experience.

In a new perspective piece, archaeologist Justing Pargeter calls the HERI podcast, Unburied Season Two, a model of what it looks like to place African voices at the centre of inquiry into the Taung Child discovery.

Under the PANACHE initiative, HERI master’s students, Kelly-Anne Shaw and Kirsten Van Der Heyden, joined a Kenyan field camp to recover evidence of past environments and human evolution.

Over 400 attendees attended the lecture series in April, to listen to a  talk focused on early humans and hydrology: the geology and dating of the last 3 million years of southern Africa.

New research, led by HERI Research Associate Dr Palesa Madupe, examines ancient proteins from the enamel of 23 Homo naledi teeth found in the Cradle of Humankind to offer evidence that each individual was female.

As a founding member of HERI, Dr Wendy Black has been pivotal in shaping the institute. As she turns to focus on a new role at Iziko Museums, we celebrate her immense contributions and enduring commitment to inclusion and excellence in archaeology.

Thanks to cutting-edge major and trace element analysis methods available in the Department of Geological Sciences at UCT, HERI researchers can study stone tools and the behaviours of our ancient ancestors.

A paper by Lauren Schroeder and colleagues, published in January 2026 in the journal PLOS One, takes a fresh evolutionary look at one of the most distinctive features of the human face: the chin.

Two HERI master’s students travelled to Laetoli, Tanzania for the 2025 fieldwork season as part of the Pan-African Consortium for Human Evolution (PANACHE) initiative, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

The SAJS award recognises original research led by HERI’s Dr Palesa Madupe that determined the biological sex of an Australopithecus africanus specimen using a palaeoproteomic approach.

Reflecting on research achievements from last year, HERI highlights 12 significant publications from its postgraduate women of colour in 2025, signalling the growing influence of Black women in African palaeoscience.

Stone tools uncovered in the Kalahari Basin tell us that individuals shared knowledge and supported each other. HERI postdoc Dr Precious Chiwara-Maenzanise writes about her research in this area to dispel the myth of isolation in ancient southern Africa.

A rare update of the state of U–Th and U–Pb dating in palaeoscience has been published with HERI’s Dr Rieneke Weij as lead author. The review highlights the advances in accuracy and precision, and the range of future potential for carbonate geochronology.

The study, led by HERI’s Georgina Luti, counters arguments that flowstones from the Cradle of Humankind are uniform and intrusive, adding support for their role in dating fossils from the region.

Unburied Season 2: The Taung Child, produced by HERI in partnership with ARC, reveals the story of the world’s most important fossil and the legacy it has left for human evolution in Africa and globally.

A new study of fossil antelope teeth from South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind has challenged a decades-old hypothesis about a dramatic ancient environmental shift that may have shaped early human evolution.

Palaeoanthropology asks profound questions: Who are we? What makes us human? Too often, answering these answers has been done by a privileged few. HERi Co-director Prof Rebecca Ackermann calls for that to change - toward feminist palaeoanthropology.

Researchers including HERI's Dr Palesa Madupe experienced a breakthrough when they extracted ancient proteins from the enamel of the 2-million-year-old teeth of four P. robustus fossils. The results mark an exciting future for early hominin research.

Using a technique called palaeoproteomics, researchers extracted 2-million-year-old protein remains from Paranthropus robustus teeth to reveal biological sex and genetic variability. 

Manthi, a palaeontologist from Kenya, he's the only African scientist elected as an international member in 2024 and the second Kenyan ever to receive the recognition.

Keebine opens up about her experience earning an honours degree in geology from UCT, and why she wants to be an inspiration for other young African women in science.

Contributed by HERI researchers and colleagues, the entry in the Wiley International recognises leadership in decolonising palaeoanthropology and human evolution research.

PhD candidate Georgina Luti has been named a 2024 Francis H. Brown African Scholar, the third time the Kenyan has been given the award for her research of sites in the Cradle of Humankind.

To commemorate 100 years since the Taung Child discovery, leaders from the South African palaeoscience community held a webinar to examine how the fossil impacted history, science, and the community where it was found.

Hominin heads can tell us how hominins interacted with their environments and how they evolved over time, says Dr Amélie Beaudet, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Poitiers. She recently visited HERI and described her work in the South African Journal of Science (SAJS)special issue commemorating the Taung Child centenary.