Course Outline

Palaeo-forensics: Reconstructing the life and times of the ancient Karoo  

Instruction

 Professor Roger M.H.Smith

Instructor Information

The course offers the student an opportunity to become immersed in the complexities of reconstructing ancient ecosystems through the detailed study of fossils embedded in the rocks in which they were buried millions of years ago. Such taphonomic investigation of fossils necessitates recording data at the point of discovery, which means that much of the practical side of this course will be conducted in the field. Students will be given the theoretical background to Karoo stratigraphy and vertebrate taphonomy at UCT and then travel to the field to apply the new palaeo-forensics approach to in-situ fossils. Eventually the students will be able to gather enough evidence to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to the death and final burial of these long-extinct animals on the ancient Karoo floodplains some 255 million years ago.

Course Summary

The course of 6 lectures held at UCT will give the students a good background to taphonomy (the study of natural deth and burial) with particular relevance to the Permian tetrapod fossils of the Karoo Supergroup. They will also be introduced to the geological evidence for rapid global warming causing the greatest mass extinction get recorded at the end of the Permain period 252 million years ago.

A day trip to the Karoo palaeontology laboratory and collections at Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town will finish with a guided tour of the Stone Bones and African Dinosaurs galleries.  The following day will be spent at an active dig site museum north of Cape Town at Langebaanweg. This is an early Pliocene (5Mya) bonebed that is currently the most diverse concentration of terrestrial vertebrate fossils of this age worldwide. We will be mainly concerned with observing the evidence and figuring out the taphonomic pathway that led to such a unique occurrence.

The remainder of the course will be based at the Karoo National Park near Beaufort West. Days will be spent visiting known fossil bearing outcrops, looking for fossils and taphonomically logging all new finds.

Some sedimentologically interesting sites will also give a better understanding of the ancient landscapes and surface precesses that let to bone bural and subsequent fossilization.  Evenings spent at the Park’s visitor centre can be times for augmentation and consolidation of notes with informal seminars.

Course Objectives

• Develop an experience-based understanding of how evolution works
• Develop very specific understanding of taphonomy and taphonomic pathways;
• How to use field equipment, excavating methods, data capture;
• How to interpret taphonomic and sedimentological evidence
• Gain knowledge of ancient terrestrial ecosystems.
• Understand the role of rapid climate change in mass extinctions
• Enhance quality of thought as to “your inner reptile”
• Appreciate the potential for an improved “deep-time” understanding of where we came from.