Georeferenced and Optimized Digital Asset Files of the Milner Hall in UNESCO World Heritage Sterkfontein Caves

These are the asset files attached to the article: Georeferenced and Optimized Digital Asset of the Milner Hall. The article presents a fully visualized and georeferenced digital asset of a chamber in the Sterkfontein Caves, namely, the Milner Hall, in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind (a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The creation of which is valuable in virtually connecting the global community to this important paleontological and archeological site. A considerable number of hominin fossils and earlier Stone Age archeological artefacts have been excavated from ancient cave infills at Sterkfontein, including the important Australopithecus specimens, “Little Foot” and “Mrs Ples”. This is also the only publicly accessible, paleoanthropological fossil-bearing cave in the Cradle of Humankind. However, the creation of accurate, visually detailed documentation and emplacement within the larger geomorphological context is challenging here. Real-world constraints, such as availability of equipment, resources and skills are often problematic at heritage sites like this. Furthermore, optimizing data for many uses that is so complex in its topology, scale and textures increases the difficulty in creating a digital asset of this nature. Our asset enables a wide range of use cases, especially within heritage, and scientific planning and outreach. It is a single digital model that contains a spectrum of believable visual effects and surveying accurate layers, and ultimately addresses the aforementioned challenges.

This video shows the methods used in the production of this asset: https://youtu.be/e3bmxOzzKSY