The Earth Sciences Department at Albany Museum has put up a few temporary exhibits on a palaeontological theme.
The Earth Sciences Department at Albany Museum has put up a few temporary exhibits on a palaeontological theme.
These include a nice one on the new coelacanth, which includes a display of the type specimens.
The exhibit coincides with a lecture by Dr Rob Gess on the topic 'Grahamstown's very own fossil coelacanth' – tomorrow (Wednesday 30 March), at 10.30am.
Dr Gess, a palaeontologist based at the Albany Museum, will discuss the newly found coelacanth, Serenichthys kowiensis, which lived in a coastal lagoon outside Grahamstown 360 million years ago during the Devonian Period.
The fossils come from black shales originally disturbed by road works at Waterloo Farm. These shales are the compacted remains of petrified mud, deposited in the quiet reaches of an estuary not unlike some of those along the Eastern Cape Coast today. Gess has collected more than 30 specimens thus far, and, remarkably, all of these more or less complete coelacanths are juveniles.
He will tell the story of this breakthrough find, describe how the coastline, animals and plants of the fossil site outside Grahamstown were different in the Devonian Period, and outline some of what we have learned from the coelacanth fossils and other fossils found at Waterloo Farm.
