By Marion Whitehead
Dr Rob Gess’ss talk on the fossils he has found in rock from the Albany district fascinated the audience at a Friends of Waters Meeting function on 1 April.
The meeting took place at the Ploughman Pub venue at the Bathurst Agricultural Museum. Lorien and Aradan Yazbek were the youngest in the audience. They are about the same age that Gess was when he became a passionate fossil finder while still a schoolboy at St Andrew’s College.
Steven Lang reported in February this year that Gess co-discovered, with Swedish professor Per Ahlberg, the biggest prehistoric bony fish ever described from Southern Africa. The biggest predator in its ecosystem, the Hyneria udlezinye, lived 360 million years ago in a palaeolagoon right here where Makhanda now stands.
The fish was fossilised after its corpse sank into mud at the bottom of the lagoon, and the mud was compressed over millions of years, eventually folded into a vast mountain range in the area. Compacted up to 10kms below the mountain tops, the fossilsfinallyy emerged after time, and weather wore the mountains down, and layers of black shale were once again close to the surface.
