site of paleoanthropological excavations just south of Johannesburg, South Africa, known for its artifacts as well as its fossils of ancient hominins (members of the human lineage). Located in the Highveld, the site was mined throughout the 20th century for its lime deposits. In 1936 Robert Broom of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria began collecting fossils from the miners. This led to the first discovery of an adult Australopithecus africanus (Australopithecus), an early hominin originally described in 1925 from Taung, another South African site. At first Broom ascribed his fossils to A. transvaalensis, a hitherto-unknown species. In 1947 he uncovered an adult skull so unique and well preserved that he proposed an entirely new genus, Plesianthropus transvaalensis. However, “Mrs. Ples,” as the 1947 fossil came to be known, is now classified with Broom's other finds as A. africanus. Crews continue to work at Sterkfontein, and the site has been one of the richest sources of information about human evolution, yielding more than 500 fossils.