A team of archaeologists spent more than 20 years excavating, cleaning and putting together the skeleton they have named Little Foot.
Its exact age is debated, but South African scientists believe the remains are an astonishing 3.67 million years old.
This would mean Little Foot was alive around 500,000 years before Lucy, the famous skeleton of an ancient human relative found in Ethiopia.
Little Foot and Lucy belong to the same Australopithecus genus but are from different species.
The scientists believe this shows humankind’s ancestors were spread across a far wider area of Africa than had previously thought.
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It also suggests there was a diverse number of species.
The fossil skeleton takes its name from the small foot bones discovered by scientist Ron Clarke in 1994 when he was sorting through bones in boxes from the Sterkfontein cave system.
In 1997 he found more bones in a cupboard at the medical school of the University of the Witwatersrand.
The rest of Little Foot was found embedded in the calcified ancient cave and the excavation, cleaning, reconstruction, casting and analysis took 20 years.
Much of the work was done deep inside the cave system, working away at concrete-like rock called breccia, using air scribes to avoid breaking the fragile and priceless fossil remains.
Prof Clarke said: “It might be small, but it might be very important.
“Because that’s how it started, with one little bone. And it helps us to understand our origins.”
He said the process of removing the bones from the caves was painstaking because they were so fragile.
Prof Clarke said: “The were extremely soft and buried in a natural concrete-like material.
“We used very small tools, like needles to excavate it. That’s why it took so long.
“It was like excavating a fluffy pastry out of concrete.”