120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 1940

Therapsid Holotypes by Matabaro Ziganira, Collections Technician

The Palaeontology Collection of the KZN Museum is important for its focus on the fossil record of KwaZulu-Natal, which is one of the most understudied fossil-bearing provinces in South Africa. One of the earliest bodies of evidence for macroevolution comes from the therapsid record of the Karoo Basin. Therapsids are vertebrates that include mammals, and the fossils in the Museum are of early, mammal-like reptiles that led to the mammals we see today, including humans. An important evolutionary step was the development of large jaws, and many therapsids were formidable predators of lower reptiles. Because Karoo rocks preserve fossils from the middle Permian through to the late Triassic, a period of approximately 100 million years, they preserve in exquisite detail the changes in the therapsid fauna during that time. The KwaZulu-Natal Museum houses an important collection of therapsid holotypes—the first specimens used to describe a species scientifically— which have contributed to our understanding of the evolution of mammals.

A recent study using our collection was published in December 2023 in Palaeontologia Africana.

Holotype of Scymnosaurus warren NM188

Holotype of Dicynodon ingens NM175

120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 1939

Chapman Stanley Hand Drill No. 130 by Wesley Flanagan, Executive Manager: Exhibitions

The Chapman Stanley No. 130 hand drill was first mass produced in 1939, two years after Stanley Works, an American tool company, acquired the British firm J.A. Chapman based in Sheffield. J.A. Chapman manufactured carpentry tools and bayonets. These drills were a game changer in the woodworking industry as the ergonomic design allowed for comfortable, efficient, and safe use in the workshop. This hand drill is also affectionately known as the “egg beater” and is still used in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum’s Exhibition Workshop today for woodworking where precision and control is more important than the power of an electric drill; for example, when countersinking screw heads on museum cases. Over the “egg-beater’s” 85 years, it has been used in the making of most of the cabinetry in the exhibition areas. Stanley Tools is also famous for their “Stanley Knife”—the original utility knife and for their locking tape measures.

A Stanley Chapman Hand Drill

 Such drills are still used today in making exhibitions for the KwaZulu-Natal Museum

120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 1983

A Museum Filled with Flies by Kirstin Williams, Chief Curator of Arthropoda

In 1983, the Diptera (flies) collection of Dr F.K.E. Zumpt, was donated to the KwaZulu-Natal Museum. Dr Zumpt worked at the South African Institute for Medical Research between 1948 and 1981. He was known for his work on ticks, mites, bedbugs, tsetse fly, and trypanosomiasis. He published over 300 scientific papers and 15 books, including being the editor of three volumes of Arthropod Parasites of Vertebrates in Africa South of the Sahara. The collection contains valuable specimens of both medical and veterinary importance in the form of pinned insects and microscope slides. These include species of the Muscidae, Glossinidae, Hippoboscidae, Calliphoridae, Sarcophagidae, and Oestridae families. Of the specimens in the collection that were collected by Zumpt, 50 are holotypes and 87 are paratypes adding to the value of the collection. The collection has been incorporated into the entomology collection of the museum and has been utilised by scientists from all over the world. The KwaZulu-Natal Museum has one of the largest and most diverse Diptera collections in Africa.

The Zumpt Collection has over 3500 specimens