The Florisbad archaeological and paleontological site is a provincial heritage site in Soutpan in the Free State province of South Africa. The most notable find at this site is the Florisbad Skull, the partial skull of an early human species that was discovered in 1932.[1]
In 1997 it was described in the Government Gazette as:[citation needed]
The Florisbad fossil site consists of a sequence of Quaternary deposits associated with a thermal spring, situated 45 km NNW of Bloemfontein in central South Africa (28°46’S, 26°04’E). There are two kinds of fossil context at Florisbad: naturally accumulated vertebrate fossil material from spring sedimentary contexts, which includes the human skull fragment, and archaeological remains from old land surfaces. The material from spring contexts represents mainly the remains of ancient carnivore hunting and scavenging around palaeo-waterholes associated with the spring. Spring sediments intrude into the horizontal or sub-horizontal deposits, which, in some cases, represent stable land surfaces. These land surfaces are, to a greater or lesser degree, disturbed by post-depositional spring action and saturation during times of a higher water table...The Florisbad fossil locality is internationally known for producing a pre-modern human skull, Middle Pleistocene fossil vertebrates and Middle Stone Age artefacts...
The stratigraphic nature of the site is characterized by distinct sand and peat layers, with the latter allowing for increased preservation of organic materials. The artifact-rich mound contains deposits ranging from the late Middle Pleistocene through to the early Holocene.[2] Excavations at this site go back to the early twentieth century, and a variety of artifact assemblages have been recovered from the site, including faunal remains and lithics.
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