The KZN Museum Natural Science Department recently hosted Dr Christian Kammerer, Curator of Palaeontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, USA. The paleontology 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. When Matabaro Ziganira, who takes care of this collection at the KZN Museum, asked Dr Kammerer how he found out about the collection, he indicated that another Palaeontologist who visited the collection in 2018, told him about the particular therapsid holotype specimens; so he was encouraged to come to see them for himself. One of the earliest really good bodies of evidence for macroevolution came from the therapsid record of the Karoo Basin. Because South African rocks preserve nearly 30 million years of continuous deposition (from the middle Permian through middle Triassic, with additional late Triassic rocks in the Stormberg Group), they preserve in exquisite detail the changes in the therapsid faunas during that time. All these invaluable contributions from specialist researchers usually add tremendous value to our collections and certainly an attraction for KZN Museum as a global research destination.
