By SUE MACLENNAN
Paleaontologist Dr Billy de Klerk retired at the end of March after 30 years at Grahamstown’s Albany Museum – and a lifetime in the field that’s set to continue with his appointment as Curator Emeritus.
In an interview with Grocott’s Mail before the Museum’s farewell for him, he spoke about his lifelong love of fossils, and why he’s so keen to share his knowledge of and enthusiasm with professionals in the field, as well as the lay public.
“I’ve been a very lucky man,” De Klerk says, looking around a comfortably uncluttered office that leaves no doubt about its occupant’s interests: family, and fossils.
To the left of the family photos, a terrier-sized dinosaur dashes towards a wooden box on a long counter; a textbook about dinosaurs on a desk, lies open to the page about Nqwebasaurus thwazi – the first dinosaur to have a Xhosa name.
That’s what the lifelike model represents. Nicknamed ‘Kirky’ because it was found in a Cretaceous period layer in the Sundays River’s Kirkwood area (Nqweba, giving the genus its name), that fossil is what lies in the wooden ‘coffin’ in another part of the room.
Concentric circles
It’s hard for De Klerk to say which was his best fossil find. There’s his first. It was a family visit to friends in Pretoria when he was about 10.
“We were out there kuiering on a Sunday on their red polished stoep.
There were chunks of quartz and other bits of rock lying around.
One of them in particular fascinated me.
“It was round, with concentric circles.”
When he learned that these were in fact the concentric rings of a fossilised tree, his career was more or less determined.
“It blew my mind – that clear connection between a living tree, and this rock I had in my hand.”
That fossil now lives in the Albany Museum, where it takes pride of place in the Karoo fossil plant display.
Then there’s Kirky – the Nqwebasaurus thwazi mentioned earlier.
Just under a metre high, Kirky comes at the top of the list of De Klerk’s professional loves.
He discovered Kirky with Callum Ross in July 1996.
(Moved from a paragraph below) As one of Kirky’s finders, he got to name it.
Nqwebasaurus twazi is the first dinosaur to have an indigenous African name.
The species name of this 135 million year old meat-eating dinosaur, twazi, means “fast-running messenger”.
The name of the 135-million-year-old therapod’s (bipedal carnivore’s) species, thwazi, is fast-running messenger.
The way De Klerk talks about Kirky, you half expect the life-size model to scamper across the floor.
Behaviour
As for his most complete, aesthetically beautiful dinosaur find, one this was one that had actually been discovered before in 1962, was a 200 million-year-old Heterodontosaurus skeleton.
A small bipedal herbivorous dinosaur that he found in the Rossouw area of the north-eastern Cape.
In January 2009 De Klerk found two specimens in one day – a full skeleton and a single skull, in a gully near Rossouw in the north-eastern Cape.
“There are the only two complete skeletons of Heterodontosaurus in existence,” he says.
But for its significance, and the extrapolation about early reptile dinosaur lifestyles and habits that it made possible, it’s the fossilised dicynodont footprints at Asante Sana near Pearston in the Karoo, 40km east of Graaff-Reinet.
“This trackway gave us information about the behaviour of Permian mammal-like reptiles those dinosaurs – whether they were herd animals or not, how they interacted at the water source.”
The painstaking science behind how this was done is detailed in De Klerk’s paper, ‘A dicynodont trackway from the Cistecephalus Assemblage Zone in the Karoo, east of Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, published in the journal, Palaeontologica Africana in 2002.
(A search using the terms ‘Asante Sana fossils Karoo’ will get you to a PDF of the paper).
Or follow this link:
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/16345/2002.V38.DEKLERK.DICYNODONT%20TRACKWAY%20CISTACEPHALUS%20ZONE.pdf?sequence=1
For ordinary members of the public, this kind of study makes the link between dry fossils in a glass case, and the living, breathing, eating lives of the extraordinary creatures that once populated the Karoo.
Engagement
These creatures – Massospondylus, Brachiosaurids, therapods and the squat, two-tusked four-fanged Aulacephalodon dicynodonts – stride, dash or waddle across marshy green meadows painted vividly on the backdrop in the Albany Museum’s dinosaur gallery.
Life-sized models glare at visitors. These, De Klerk explains, are the work of another of his valued collaborators, taxidermist Terence Coffin-Grey.
Coffin-Grey, and close friend and fellow palaeontologist Professor Bruce Rubidge at Wits, have been key to efforts to engage communities, and members of the public, with their pre-historic heritage.
He explained how and why the Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre in New Bethesda was established.
Employment
Rubidge – whose family farms in the area – was concerned about the Gatsrivier fossil site, at the end of Martins Street in the village.
“No one was looking after it, and specimens at this really important site were being damaged,” De Klerk said.
So with seed money from the Department of Science and Technology, and a Cape Town benefactor, they set up a Section 21 Ecotourism business, which provide some employment, and at the same time offer tourists the means to appreciate the area’s prehistoric heritage.
Coffin-Grey and Marx replicated material from the Albany Museum gallery for a smaller version in a room on premises adjacent to the Owl House.
Despite various hiccups, the Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre in New Bethesda has been open for 10 years, and has served well, says De Klerk, to create jobs, protect the fossils and engage both the local community and members of the public.
In praise of a palaeontologist On his retirement on 31 March, De Klerk had been working at the Albany Museum for 30 years.
He was the first full-time curator of the Earth Science collections at the Albany Museum.
He established and developed the museum’s fossil preparation laboratory, and raised money to employ three full-time preparation staff.
De Klerk assisted in the development and installation of the Space Gallery, and created one of the finest palaeontology galleries in the country.
His many public, school and Rhodes University lectures have earned him a reputation as an expert and extremely enthusiastic speaker.
His outstanding research and outreach activities with the broader communities of the Eastern Cape, including his pivotal role in establishing the Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre in Nieu Bethesda, have established him as a respected and widely consulted vertebrate palaeontologist.
De Klerk’s very progressive attitude to technology saw him establish one of the very first digital catalogues in the country, and it was through his energy and efforts that the Museum has the fibre-optic cable connection to Rhodes allowing it access to the internet.
De Klerk said that following his retirement, he would like to continue with his Karoo and Kirkwood vertebrate palaeontology research.
* Source: Documents from the Albany Museum
