Ron Clarke of the University of the Witwatersrand spent much of 15 years excavating the Little Foot fossil from rock deep inside the Sterkfontein caves near Johannesburg.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by original NatGeo article wording, independently corroborated by AAAS/Science.org's 2015 report, Wikipedia, and Wits University sources. Minor variation in cited years (14-23) across different publications reflects the multi-phase nature of the excavation, but '15 years' matches contemporaneous 2015 sources precisely. [cascade flags: wikipedia_dropped_other_sources_exist | tier=silver indep_score=0.95 clusters=3 claim_tier=notable | kind=empirical eligibility=high]
Sources
- 'Little Foot' Fossil Skeleton Rivals Famous Lucy in Age (seed:science_and_space)
- https://www.science.org/content/article/little-foot-fossil-could-be-human-ancestor (corroboration)
- https://gulfnews.com/world/oceania/south-african-little-foot-skeleton-fossil-could-change-map-of-human-ancestry-1.1306922 (corroboration)
- https://sterkfonteincaves.wits.ac.za/our-people/ronald-clarke/ (corroboration)
- https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/research-news/2018/2018-12/little-foots-history-revealed-for-the-first-time.html (corroboration)