How paleontologists identify new fossil material and determine how sabretooth tigers lived millions of years ago, and the kind of relationships they had, will be explained at the next West Coast Fossil Park Talk on Saturday 23 September.
The Fossil Park’s 25th year of existence will also be commemorated over the same weekend as well as its being a market day.
The speaker, Caitlin Rabe, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town in the Department of Biological Sciences’ Palaeobiology Research Group.
She will guide visitors through the steps of how new fossil material is identified, and she will also paint a vivid picture of the life and relationships of the charismatic sabretooth cats.
She will also share how new research has uncovered two novel species of sabretooth cats from Langebaanweg and explain the road to how the researchers reached their exciting conclusions.
As part of Rabe’s research for her honours degree she examined the remains of a large, unidentified sabretooth from Langebaanweg that appeared to exhibit numerous skeletal deformities.
Rabe’s road to Langebaanweg started with a trip to the Fossil Park in 2019. This inspired her to pursue a career in palaeobiology and was subsequently awarded a bursary from the Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences (now GENUS) to work on material from the Langebaanweg E Quarry.
Her current doctoral research is centred around the dicynodont Diictodon – a small burrowing animal that lived during the Permian period in the South African Karoo Basin.
The talk costs R50 per person and starts at 12:00. For more information, send an email to info@fossilpark.org.za or visit fossilpark.org.za.
V Paleontolgists are investigators in the field of palaeobiology, a branch of palaeontology concerned with the biology of fossil organisms that use biological field research of current biota and fossils millions of years old to answer questions about the molecular evolution and the evolutionary history of life.
