120 Years in 120 Objects
Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120th 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
