“The Franklin Research Grant has enabled us to use sophisticated, computer-assisted methods to reconstruct most of the missing parts of this significant human fossil from Hofmeyr. This new information will enable us to shed additional light on the timing and appearance of modern humans at the beginning of the Later Stone Age in Africa.”  Frederick E. Grine’s project, Stereolithographic Reconstruction and 3-D Radiographic Analysis of a Late Pleistocene Human Skull from South Africa, which was published in Science in 2007, was recognized by Time magazine as one of the top ten science stories for that year.  According to Dr. Grine, Professor of Anthropology and Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University (SUNY), a nearly complete human cranium was discovered some 50 years ago in a dry river channel near the town of Hofmeyr, South Africa. This specimen has been dated to approximately 36,000 years before present, a significant finding in view of the lack of human fossils from the Late Pleistocene of sub-Saharan Africa, the time when, and place where, the modern humans who migrated out to inhabit the rest of the world first appeared. The Hofmeyr cranium had been seriously damaged since its discovery, with large portions of the face and braincase missing.  Study of the fossil, insofar as it is preserved, revealed intriguingly close affinities to penecontemporaneous crania from the Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia.