MAGALIESBURG, South Africa — Jagged rocks hooked into Steven Tucker’s overalls as he squeezed through a crack deep in a subterranean cave. Upon emerging at the other end, he saw he was in a chamber dripping with stalactites. Then his headlamp shone onto a bone. Then more bones, and half of a skull.
It was the night of Sept. 13, 2013, and Tucker and his caving partner had just discovered the remains of what scientists would later determine to be a new member of the human family tree.
Tucker was only trying to get out of fellow caver Rick Hunter’s way, inching to the side, on a different intended route when he stepped into the crack in the network of caves known as Rising Star. He’d heard of the crack before, but despite having been down this cave more than 20 times before, he had never noticed it, nor known of any other caver who had ventured down it.
“It’s exciting to find something new,” Tucker told The Associated Press on Thursday, trying to explain why he took the risk.
The 123,550-acre area has a network of caves that has yielded nearly 40 percent of known hominid fossils, according to the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
The fossils were recovered over 21 days in November 2013 and seven days in March 2014 by a team assembled by American paleoanthropologist Lee Berger and his colleagues. The archaeologists needed people slender enough, but also experienced enough, to handle the work.
The six who were eventually chosen were all women, including American University Ph.D. candidate Becca Peixotto.
“I saw an ad on Facebook,” Peixotto said, and she immediately signed on.
