Short answers, pulled from the story.
Scottish-South African palaeontologist Robert Broom erected the genus Paranthropus in 1938. He based this decision on a male braincase specimen known as TM 1517 discovered by schoolboy Gert Terblanche at the Kromdraai fossil site.
Paranthropus possessed massively built skulls featuring a prominent gorilla-like sagittal crest along the midline. This bony ridge anchored large temporalis muscles used for powerful chewing while their teeth included broad molars with thick enamel coatings known as post-canine megadontia.
Modern analysis suggests that P. boisei preferred soft foods instead of cracking open nuts despite its nickname Nutcracker Man. The South African P. robustus appears to have been an omnivore consuming mainly C4 savanna plants and C3 forest plants alongside seeds and possibly tubers or termites.
Paranthropus lived between approximately 2.9 million years ago and at least one million years ago across East Africa and South Africa. The Cradle of Humankind was dominated by springbok but also hosted giraffes and elephants while the youngest record of P. boisei comes from Konso Ethiopia about 1.4 million years ago.
Bone tools dating between 2.3 million years ago and 0.6 million years ago appear in Swartkrans Kromdraai and Drimolen caves often associated with P. robustus remains. A 2011 strontium isotope study of teeth from the Sterkfontein Valley revealed that females were more likely to leave their place of birth indicating patrilocal migration rather than matrilocal systems found in harem societies.