Unveiling of SA fossil sparks palaeo-tourism

The University of the Witwatersrand palaeoanthropologist, Professor Lee Berger's incredible hominid find has not only drawn attention to South Africa's stature as a country rich in fossil remains, but has also stirred renewed interest in palaeontology.

The recent focus on the country's fossil heritage has piqued the interest of domestic and foreign tourists, if Maropeng's visitor statistics are anything to go by. Maropeng, the official visitors' site for the UNESCO Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, reflected a monthly traffic increase of 33 percent compared with April 2009. While the Australopithecus sediba fossils were on display, from 9 to 18 April, visitor numbers increased from 5064 to 7257 compared with the same period in 2009.

Plant-eating dinosaur

Palaeo-Sciences Week, held at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, exposed the public to just some of the country's fossil finds. These included a plant-eating dinosaur from the Free State; a fossilised dinosaur egg from Golden Gate Highlands National Park in the Maluti Mountains in the Free State highlands; a giant buffalo fossil and two fossils, an extinct bear and a giant pig, from the West Coast Fossil Park.

The discovery of the two-million-year-old Australopithecus sediba fossils at the Cradle of Humankind and their subsequent display at Maropeng, the South African Isiko Museum in Cape Town and Origins Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand, has stimulated public interest
in a field that is seldom in the public eye.

Tremendous amount of interest

"There has been a tremendous amount of interest in the significance of South Africa as part of the world fossil heritage," said Professor Francis Thackeray, director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand. "In 1996 a survey indicated that less that 10 percent of South Africans had heard of Mrs Ples, but by the end of 1997 more than 60 percent knew of the famous fossil," he said. "We have been staggered by the genuine interest shown this year in the Australopithecus sediba fossils, both in South Africa and around the world. Professor Lee Berger's discovery has once again put South Africa and our remarkable fossil heritage in the limelight."