Prof Herries will talk about his team’s latest discoveries at the Drimolen hominin bearing site in South Africa, including the world’s oldest Homo erectus and their suggestion that new fossils of Paranthropusfrom Drimolen suggest evidence of microevolution in this genus. Prof Herries will also outline new fossil discoveries made during their 2023 season. More broadly Prof Herries will outline what these discoveries, and others in South Africa, mean for our understanding of the human evolutionary story, including recent debates over the age of the South African hominin record.

Professor Andy I.R. Herries is a Palaeoanthropologist based in the Dept of Archaeology at La Trobe University. Prof Herries directs excavations and a field school at the Drimolen hominin site in South Africa where his team has found the world’s oldest Homo erectus and the best-preserved cranium of Paranthropus robustus.