In December of 2020, I received an email.
This email triggered a series of events that would eventually end up with me - Ben - and
Doug travelling to South Africa for just over 3 weeks, while in the midst of a pandemic,
in order to join a palaeontological expedition deep into the heart of the vast Karoo semi-desert.
Here, we spent our time contending with the local wildlife, the
elements and gravity as we tried to find and
excavate fossils dating back to over 200 million years ago.
This adventure took us all across the country, from Johannesburg and the Cradle of Humankind,
down to Clarens on the border with Lesotho to find dinosaur footprints, and still further
south to farms in the barren wilderness of the Karoo where gorgonopsians and dinocephalians
lurk.
We made some absolutely incredible discoveries on this expedition and learnt a great deal
along the way.
So, what was this email that started it all?
Well, it was sent by palaeontologist Dr Julien Benoit of the University of the Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg, who has done a lot of research on the prehistoric inhabitants of the Karoo
Supergroup, from gorgonopsians to Thrinaxodon and the potentially venomous Euchambersia.
Julien explained who he was and that he was aiming to run a field school for palaeontology
students of the university to be taken out into the field to experience what this aspect
of work in this science is like - and then he made an offer that was too good to refuse.
In order to make this field trip a possibility, he asked for our help in raising enough money
through crowdfunding and then said that if we were successful in meeting this goal we
would both be invited to fly out to South Africa to join the team on this adventure
- how could we possibly say no?
After sorting out the details and organising everything, the crowdfunding campaign was
launched a few months later and was a tremendous success, with more than enough being raised
to cover all the costs of such an undertaking.
Thanks to the immense generosity of our wonderfully selfless subscribers, Doug, myself, and 14
others were going to be able to experience the thrills of fieldwork in the South African
Karoo.
Thrinaks 2021 was happening.
We were incredibly excited - well, one of us was.
(Cut to Doug)
So it was that in mid August of 2021, we found ourselves boarding a plane bound for the southern
hemisphere.
After a sleepless overnight journey on the plane, we arrived in a city like no other
- Johannesburg.
We were immediately taken to the University of the Witwatersrand to see the collections
of the Evolutionary Studies Institute, an unbelievable experience that instantly got
us excited for the incredible fossils we would find - in case you couldn’t tell from the
fact that I could not stop smiling the entire time.
Seeing those boundless rows of storage shelves and cabinets packed with stunning Karoo fossils
from the Permian, Triassic and Jurassic periods was a fantastic introduction to the prehistory
of this remarkable country.
Later that day, after being introduced to the wonderful team members of Thrinaks 2021,
we were then granted access into the ESI’s prized possession - the Hominid Vault.
Filled to the brim with bones, both fossil and recent, this room houses some of the most
significant discoveries ever made in the history of study on human evolution, including the
Taung Child itself - the first ever Australopithecus to be discovered.
It’s a slight understatement to say that we had a good first day - and yet, somehow,
our second was even better.
On day 2 we journeyed to the Cradle of Humankind, the UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes
caves from which fossil australopithecines and members of our own genus have been recovered,
and were invited by researchers to actually go down into Rising Star Cave itself, the
system in which Homo naledi was found back in 2013, as well as another cavern known only
as Cave 105 - a site that has recently been identified as containing more hominid fossils.
I don’t know how to quite describe the feelings of utter awe and wonder that I experienced
being in these places, knowing that only a few hundred thousand years ago our ancient
ancestors and relatives were roaming these lands and ending up down in these caves.
It was truly a once in a lifetime experience, I honestly can’t quite believe how lucky
we were to see the things we did.
The next day, though, it was time to get to work and start the expedition.
After driving all day long, only stopping for a short hike to explore a dinosaur trackway,
we reached the town of Oviston - our home for the next week.
Based out of Oviston, over the next few days we travelled around to various farms as well
as a Nature Reserve in order to prospect and excavate fossils.
We had two main aims while we were here - firstly, we wanted to extract a couple of associated
Lystrosaurus fossils that had been identified on a previous field trip, and secondly we
wanted to try to locate the original, type locality of the first fossil of the possibly
venomous therocephalian Euchambersia.
Only two fossils are known for this animal - both skulls lacking lower jaws - and the
original place the first one was found has sadly been lost.
Therefore Julien, who has done quite a bit of research on this organism, was determined
to find more.
Unfortunately, neither of these aims went quite to plan.
The excavation went quite dramatically wrong, as you’ll see, and we weren’t able to
find any more Euchambersia - though we did still do some useful science by determining
where it probably didn’t come from.
Nevertheless, we still made some great discoveries, even getting to see the boundary between the
Permian and the Triassic that marks the worst mass extinction event in the history of life.
After this first week in the field we then travelled with high hopes to our next locality,
even further Southwest.
This was Combrinckskraal, another farm on which even older Permian fossils have been
found.
Here, in this incredibly barren and dry landscape utterly unlike anything I’d seen before,
we again had two missions.
One: we were to excavate the body of a Tapinocaninus fossil, a kind of large herbivorous dinocephalian
- and, two: we had to prospect the farmland for more evidence which could help to better
define the stratigraphic boundary between two biozones in the Mid Permian.
Yet again we had more, err, difficulties with the excavation and it sadly ended up having
to be abandoned by the end, but the prospecting was a bit more successful, with some pretty
significant finds being made.
It was on one of the days at Combrinckskraal that we then met Professor Bruce Rubidge for
the first time.
The Rubidge family has a palaeontological legacy in South Africa stretching back generations,
with Bruce’s grandfather Sydney also having made significant contributions to the field.
It was an absolute honour to meet Professor Rubidge, and after leaving the Combrinckskraal
area a few days later we then journeyed to Bruce’s hometown of Graaff-Reinet.
Here, we were taken to see the Rubidge Collection on the nearby Rubidge family farm, another
astonishing collection of fossils quite unlike any other I’ve ever seen.
All sorts of holotype specimens - the fossils that the species names are based on - are
on display here.
There was just too much to look at and explore, it was fascinating to see and again gave me
that wonderful feeling of being reminded just why I love the science of palaeontology so
much.
Bruce also took us to see the Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre in another small town nearby,
as well as explaining to us his brilliant ideas for palaeo-tourism projects in South
Africa, a very worthwhile effort that we actually got to help him with.
That then marked the end of the field trip, but Doug and I still had a few more days in
South Africa after our return to Johannesburg.
So, the day before we left for the UK, we travelled to Tswaing Crater, the site of a
meteorite impact that struck the Earth about 220,000 years ago, and actually got to hike
around the rim and down into the crater itself, another incredible experience.
And then, our journey was over.
We returned to the UK after another long, sleepless flight, and that pretty much brings
us up to where we are as we record this - self-isolating for a fun-filled 10 days in a hotel near Heathrow.
We set out on this expedition with the aim of not only hopefully making some important
new discoveries about the palaeontology of the Karoo Supergroup and the extinct fauna
that once lived there, but also to give a unique, inside perspective of what palaeontological
fieldwork is really like.
Granted, such work will always vary depending on the places you go and the fossils you’re
looking for but we feel like we’ve been able to capture a pretty good impression of
what this aspect of the science is like and the successes, failures and unexpected changes
of plans that are involved.
But more than that, it’s clear that fieldwork is about the people you do it with.
A palaeontological expedition is only going to be as good as those involved, and in this
case I’m incredibly grateful for the team members of Thrinaks 2021, a group of highly
passionate and knowledgeable people who helped to make this such a fantastic experience for
me and Doug.
As we learned, there’s nothing that helps people bond quite like shared mutual suffering,
as well as talking about fossils.
Our South African adventure was an absolutely awesome experience and I feel so fortunate
to have been given this unbelievable opportunity.
Thank you again so, so much to the people who donated and made this all possible, as
well as to Julien for inviting us to be a part of this in the first place.
And don’t worry, this definitely won’t be the only video about our travels.
We’re planning to release 9 more videos about what we got up to, covering in much
more detail the day by day events of the trip as well as the prehistoric animals we encountered.
Still to come in these next videos are interviews with palaeontologists, exclusive looks at
fossil collections and a documentation of Doug’s alarming descent into madness - it’s
gonna be a great time, you won’t want to miss them.