Resume of Success

Over the last 17 years PAST has grown from a small non-­-governmental organization supporting human origins research at Sterkfontein Cave outside of Johannesburg, to an increasingly pan-­-African concern that supports research in all of the origin sciences while also providing critical education and public outreach programs. Some of PAST’s many successes are listed below.

• Formation of PAST in 1994 helped to avert a national crisis in human origins research when lack of funding threatened to close down excavations at the world-­-renowned
• Sterkfontein Cave. Today, research is thriving at Sterkfontein, which with PAST’s support became the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in 2000.
• PAST has supported many major fossil discoveries. These include ‘Little Foot’ and ‘Sediba’, among the world’s oldest complete skeletons of human ancestors, as well as a number of significant finds of dinosaurs, early mammal-­-like reptiles, and primitive chordates. PAST is a founding supporter of the Witwatersrand University’s Institute of Human Evolution, Africa’s leading center for thestudy of human origins.
• PAST’s Scatterlings of Africa project is endorsed by project leaders of the world’s most iconic human origins sites (East Africa’s Olduvai-­-Serengeti area, Tanzania; Lake Turkana region, Kenya; Afar region, Ethiopia), underscoring the need for PAST to increase its support of research beyond South Africa.
• PAST has supported hundreds of bursaries for students from across Africa to complete postgraduate degrees. Many of these students now work in the field of origins sciences as researchers, technicians, tour guides, teachers and government employees.
• In 2001, PAST introduced the Walking Tall Educational Theatre Project, an origin sciences educational intervention created when the topic of evolution was a controversial and under-­- resourced new addition to South Africa’s national school curriculum. Subsequently, Walking Tall has become an acclaimed educational program that has reached nearly one million South African children and educators. The successful launch of WalkingTall in Tanzania in 2011 demonstrates the merits of expanding this educational program to other parts of Africa.
• PAST hosts a successful annual lecture series for the general public featuring high-­-profile scientific speakers that have included Don Johanson (discoverer of the famous ‘Lucy’ skeleton), Richard Dawkins (author and evolutionary biologist), Richard Leakey (famous Kenyan paleoanthropologist), Tim White and Berhane Asfaw (leading paleoanthropologists discoverers of the famous ‘Ardi’ skeleton), and Paul Sereno (dinosaur expert). PAST’s public outreach also includes informal public talks, Walking Tall performances, and performances of our diversity-­-themed play, ReVerse.
• PAST has hosted many international luminaries to view South Africa’s fossil collections, including Sir Richard Branson, President Jacob Zuma, the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, Donald Gips, anti-­-apartheid activist Jay Naidoo, and George W. Bush’s daughters, Barbara and Jenna.
• PAST continues to receive hundreds of worthy applications for support each year from schools, communities, scientists, students, research projects, technicians and academic institutions. And the need keeps growing.

South African Journal of Science. Dr. Bob Brain

The first animals: ca. 760-million-year-old sponge-likefossils from Namibia.

Please click on the link below to see Bob Brain’s remarkable research on sponges recently published in the South African Journal of Science, and featured by National Geographic on the link below.

Bob Brain's Research on Sponges

 Scatterlings of Africa's United States visit successfully completed

Scatterlings of Africa's United States visit was successfully completed with many new partnerships established with U.S institutions. PAST is also now able to receive U.S. donations through our partnership with the King Baudouin Foundation.

Donations through KBFUS

U.S.-based donors:
U.S.-based donors can support our activities in a tax-efficient way through a contribution to the American Friends of PAST (AFroPAST) at the King Baudouin Foundation United States (KBFUS). Because KBFUS is a public charity, within the meaning of Sections 501(c)(3) and 509(a)(1) of the IRC, donors may claim the maximum tax benefits allowed by U.S. tax law for their contributions.
Go to www.kbfus.org, click on the 'Donate Now' button and select "PAST" under 'Giving Option 1: Non-Profit Partners Overseas

Other Press Releases

» Genivive Swart.... - Reportage in British Airways in-flight magazine

» Media release Mentorship Programme

» Mr. Bones - Palaeontologist Robert Blumenschine Mail and Guardian

» A gap in Palaeo-sciences study; Learners encouraged to consider a Palaeo-sciences related career

» Miriam Tawane - The Star Workplace

New Dinosaur Discoveries

by Dr Adam Yates

Aardonyx celestae

Aardonyx represents a major dinosaur discovery that has helped us unravel the path that long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs (called sauropodomorphs) took as they evolved from small, lithe, two-legged forms into the giant, elephantine sauropods, the largest terrestrial animals that ever lived. Life reconstruction of Aardonyx.