A skeleton that has been lying around in the cupboards of the Nothern Flagship Institute (formerly known as the Transvaal Museum) in Pretoria for 50 years, has now been linked to the world-famous Mrs Ples.

Dr Francis Thackeray, palaeontologist and researcher at the museum, says a link has been established between the post-cranial remains of Skeleton Sts 14 and the Mrs Ples skull. This was done through a sophisticated scanning process.

The skull and bones are about two million years old and were found in the Sterkfontein caves near Krugersdorp by Dr Robert Broom.

Until the scan, the skull was thought to be that of an adult woman of the species Australopithecus Africanus - from which the name Mrs Ples was derived. The scan showed that the skull was that of a young, adult male of the same species, and has been dubbed Master Ples.

The scan also indicated to Thackeray and his French colleagues, Dr Dominque Gommery and Professor José Braga, that the skeleton of a young male Australopithecus Africanus that had been languishing in a cupboard for 50 years.

Further investigations showed that the Ples skull and the Sts 14 bones were found in the same geographic area - the skull on April 18, 1947, and the other parts of the skeleton in August that same year.

"Studying fossils is very much like detective work," says Thackeray. Taking everything into account, it seems certain the bones do indeed belong to Master Ples, according to an article published by the three palaeontologists in the latest South African Journal of Science.