RESEARCH
The Science Behind the Stones: Research Overview
“… it is not possible to write a comprehensive text on the evolution of life without extensive reference to the southern African fossil record…” (NRF)
The Karoo Supergroup, that preserves the best record of continental Permian to Jurassic faunal biodiversity, possesses a rich fossil record and has enabled numerous biodiversity studies to enhance understanding of the evolution of important tetrapod lineages, and allowed biostratigraphic subdivision of the Late Permian and Triassic Beaufort groups.
Karoo Origins – The Fossil Centre is situated in the Beaufort Group, which is one of the few fossil-bearing terrestrial depositional sequences that records the end Capitanian global extinction (260 million years ago).
An understanding of the fossils and geology from these horizons will provide answers to the phylogenetic development of the earliest therapsids and give an indication of faunal diversity patterns during the Middle Permian.
The Director of Karoo Origins – The Fossil Centre, Professor Bruce Rubidge, has since 1990 played a key academic role at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
His tenure with Wits has seen him as the Director of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research (BPI), Head of the Palaeontology Department and in 2013 he was appointed the Director of the Evolutionary Studies Institute, and at the same time Director of the DSI/NRF National Centre of Excellence for Palaeoscience.
As a dedicated academic, Professor Rubidge seeks to expose as many undergraduate and postgraduate palaeontology students as possible to the wonders of the Karoo. The result of his passion is a collaboration between the Centre and Wits University, that provides the Centre with full access to the Wits research facilities. The Centre itself houses a library of books and research papers on palaeontology, as well as an onsite laboratory for students undertaking research in the area.
Research collaborations are already in place with numerous leading local and international museums, universities and palaeoscience research centres.
For more information on the collaboration with Wits click on the ‘contact us’ tab at the top of this page.
On The Fossil Trail: Current Research at Karoo Origins
Lower Beaufort Geology
The major research focus of Karoo Origins is a multidisciplinary project on the litho- and biostratigraphy of the Lower Beaufort around the Karoo basin and includes morphological and taxonomic research on different tetrapod taxa from these rocks. An important focus is to understand the stratigraphic distribution of different vertebrate species to quantify the end-Capitanian extinction.
Therapsida
Dinocephalians: Two recently completed PhD studies address the taxonomy of the Tapinocephalidae (Saniye Neumann) and Titanosuchidae (Sifelani Jirah) and the text is currently being edited for publication.
Biarmosuchia: Fossils of three new biarmosuchian species from the lower Beaufort are being described by our team. Matlago, Benoit and Rubidge have recently described a specimen from Iziko Museum collections which was collected several decades ago by LD Boonstra but the significance of this discovery was not realized until now. The second specimen was recently discovered near Prince Albert by PhD student, Zanildo Maconga, and is currently being prepared for description. The third specimen was discovered in the Brandfort district of Free State Province and is being described by David Groenewald (Spain), Mike Day (UK) and Bruce Rubidge.
Cynodontia: So far cynodonts have not yet been discovered in he Tapinocephalus Assemblage Zone. On a recent field trip of our team to Victoria West Marc Van den Brandt discovered a new basal cynodont species from the overlying Endothiodon Assemblage Zone. This specimen is one of the oldest and most primitive cynodonts, and is of great significance in understanding the distant ancestry of mammals.
Parareptiles
Pareiasaurs:
This cosmopolitan taxon, which lived during the middle and late Permian, is known from numerous Pangaean countries. This project of Marc Van den Brandt is to understand South African pareiasaur diversity. Marc and his team of international collaborators are determining body mass for different South African pareiasaur species to understand body size increase towards the end of the Permian. Marc, together with colleagues from Russia, and Brazil, is undertaking pioneering research on the use of scutes (scales) of different pareiasaurs for taxonomic purposes.
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS PAPERS PUBLISHED RECENTLY BY KAROO ORIGINS.
Unearthing The Past: Palaeontology In The Headlines
| New Fossils Reveal Diverse Terrestrial Ecosystem 75,000 Years after End-Permian Mass Extinction. | Read The Story |
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| New Study Explains How Ancient Amphibians Survived End-Permian Mass Extinction. | Read The Story |
| Early–middle Permian Mediterranean gorgonopsian suggests an equatorial origin of therapsids. | Read The Story |
| Triassic fossils shed new light on ancient ecosystems. | Read The Story |
| Climate Crisis That Accompanied The Great Dying Mass Extinction Event. | Read The Story |
| Fossils reveal rapid land recovery after end-Permian extinction. | Read The Story |
| First fossil hyena tracks found in South Africa – how expert animal trackers helped. | Read The Story |
| The blood-curdling Permian monsters that ruled the Earth before dinosaurs | Read The Story |
| Graaff-Reinet fossil centre opens, housing world’s biggest collection of unique species | Read The Story |
| Karoo Origins Fossil Centre Showcases World's Largest Display of Unique Prehistoric Species | Read The Story |
| Dinosaurs return to the Free State: South Africa’s R120 million dinosaur centre | Read The Story |
| Introduction to vertebrate evolution in the Permian rift basins of Tanzania and Zambia | Read The Story |
| Dinosaur ‘mummies’ help scientists visualize the fleshy details of these ancient animals | Read The Story |
| Selected Karoo geoheritage sites of palaeontological significance in South Africa and Lesotho | Read The Story |
| Rubriek: Fossielsentrum plaas Karoo-bekken in die kollig | Read The Story |
| ‘Mammal Origins’ Review: Our Ancient Predecessors on PBS | Read The Story |
| 250-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Origins of Our Unique Hearing | Read The Story |
| The Karoo Fossil Finder: Discovering life before the dinosaurs in South Africa’s heartland | Read The Story |