The “Underground Astronauts” is a nickname for the group of six scientists and excavators from the original Rising Star expedition. We got the name, I think, because working in the Dinaledi Chamber ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Two years ago, a team of experts from around the world was assembled in order to document and collect hundreds of fossils found in ...

Marina Elliott is a researcher in Physical and Biological Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. The Conversation Africa's Natasha Joseph spoke with Dr. Marina Elliott, lead author of the paper ...

Along with the sensational news out of South Africa this morning that researchers on the Rising Star Expedition have discovered a new hominin species, Homo naledi, comes a second article from the team ...

The extremely difficult conditions in which University of the Witwatersrand's (Wits) Professor Lee Berger's Rising Star team was forced to work, gave rise to the use of space-age technology to map the ...

The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) partnered with US-based Perot Museum of Nature and Science, to develop what they call a world-first virtual reality (VR) app that explores the ...

Anthropologist Lee Berger's daughter, Megan (top), and Rick Hunter, a member of the underground exploration team, navigate the narrow chutes leading to the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave in ...

VR apps, open access data, social media searches—this expedition wants to update its field. On September 10, 2015, scientists formally announced that a new species of hominin had been discovered in ...

Francis Thackeray receives funding from the Mellon Foundation and the National Research Foundation Many questions have been thrown up by the discovery in South Africa of a previously unidentified ...

When South African spelunkers Rick Hunter and Steve Tucker went off-map and discovered a hidden chamber in Rising Star cave, about 30 miles northwest of Johannesburg, it was an incredibly lucky find.

Scientists roped in the use of high-tech laser scanning, photogrammetry and 3-D mapping technology to map Homo naledi's Dinaledi chamber. The extremely difficult conditions in which University of the ...