In March 2008, Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, undertook an exploration project in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site outside of Johannesburg, in order to map the known caves identified by him and his colleagues over the past several decades, and to place known fossil sites onto Google Earth so that information could be shared with colleagues.

Berger brought in geologist Paul Dirks, at that time Head of the School of GeoSciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, to lead the geological aspects of this exploratory project.

[1] On 1 August he dropped off Dirks to map the recognized cave system and proceeded into the uninvestigated area with his dog Tau, a Rhodesian Ridgeback who accompanied him on almost all his explorations.

[1] Almost immediately he discovered a rich fossil site that was unknown to science, in the vicinity of more than three dozen caves that had been apparently unrecognized by previous researchers.

[3] In addition to the fossils revealed initially, rocks collected from the site have been examined with CT scans and contain even more bones, suggesting that the type specimen, Karabo, will become even more complete.

[4] The species is suggested by the authors to be a good candidate for being the transitional species between the southern African ape-man Australopithecus africanus (the Taung Child, Mrs. Ples) and either Homo habilis or even a direct ancestor of Homo erectus (Turkana Boy, Java Man, Peking Man).