Liora Kolska Horwitz of The Hebrew University and Francesco Berna of Simon Fraser University, in collaboration with the McGregor Museum (where excavated assemblages are housed), was carried out from around 2008. A digital model of the site was created by laser scanning, forming part of the Zamani Project. Key team members who have worked on the dating of the lower units are the late Hagai Ron (magnetostratigraphic or palaeomagnetic dating), Ari Matmon (cosmogenic isotope dating), Robyn Pickering (U/Pb dating) and Naomi Porat (Optically stimulated luminescence dating). Results of these archaeological, dating, sedimentological and palaeoenvironmental studies were first reported at a symposium convened by Chazan and Horwitz at the site. They have since been published in a series of papers, and in a special issue on the site published in 2015. In April 2021, archaeologists from the University of Toronto and the Hebrew University announced the results of magnetostratigraphy and cosmogenic dating of the cave. According to the paper published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, making of the simple Oldowan tools and finding of animal bones from the thick sedimentary layer inside prove that this cave was occupied by Early Stone Age humans about 2 million years ago. Palaeoenvironmental investigations The sediments within the cave exhibit exceptional preservation of organic remains including macro-botanical remains, phytoliths and micro and macro-fauna which shed light inter alia on species extinctions relative to the end of the last ice age circa 10 000 years ago – studied by Francis Thackeray. Margaret Avery and Yolanda Fernandez-Jalvo are studying the small mammal remains introduced to the cave sediments as part of the contents of owl droppings and which provide indications as to the palaeenvironmental conditions outside the cave. Also preserved are pollen, another key source of information on changing environmental conditions outside the cave, currently studied by Louis Scott but initially examined by E.M. van Zinderen Bakker. Lloyd Rossouw is researching phytoliths from the cave, which show changing vegetation profiles, while preserved charcoal is being studied by Marion Bamford to generate data on woody plants. Deposition processes have been the focus of work by Karl Butzer and, currently, Paul Goldberg and Francesco Berna. Ritual uses Indications of the cave's contemporary social or ritual significance relate inter alia to the occasional collecting of water, by local African people, for healing purposes. There are other nearby sites where beliefs concerning the ritual power of water (associations with a