West Coast Fossil Park

Being on the road often leads one to into deep contemplation. Life, death, the hereafter; and how cool it is. Oh no; not in the black lace-clad, eyeliner-wearing, latex-sporting, poetry-in-a-cemetery-writing, dabbling-in-sadomasochistic sexual practices, Ann-Rice-reading goth way (which is hot by the by). More in the ten-year-old boy, comic-reading, nerdy kind of way. I am talking about Fossils. I dig fossils. I was the kid would collected the dinosaur books, toys; you name it. My uncle once took a one hundred kilometre detour on a trip so I could check out a Dinosaur Park. So when I found out that between Vredeberg and Langebaan there was a Fossil Park, I had to go.

The site used to be a phosphate mine which started in 1943. The phosphate was first used for armaments during the war the as fertilizer. The phosphate came from the Varswater Formation. Where today we have veld, there used to be lush forest. This was due to the the river that once went through the area. The Cape looked a lot different in those days. Table Mountain and Langebaan were an islands and we had some really cool creatures just chilling out by the riverside, but I will get to that later. When the miners were first asked if they were finding any fossils, they giggled, slapped their thighs and then mocked the scientists for their silly beliefs in giant lizards, whilst hurriedly lead them from the the dig site. This was because they were finding a lot of them, and if they had told any one, then mining would have had to stop and be replaced by painfully slow and careful excavation. By the time some one spoke up, about 80% of the fossils had been destroyed. So thank you bottom line for destroying a priceless part of our history. If ever I was not impressed by people making money in the past, I could care even less now.

But thankfully someone eventually spoke up. The large amount of varying species in one place lead scientists to believe that there had been a flood. This was substantiated by the fact that whale bones were found among the many land-bound animal bones. Though if you were to ask the guys at the History Channel, they would tell you it may be proof of ancient aliens. I asked the tour guide and she said "There is no proof that aliens were not involved," as well as "We could not replicate these finds today". I am not even joking, but I may have asked some leading questions.

Enough back-story;  lets talk about the place itself. Tours are done every hour. I was the only one on mine, so I got the cute tour guide all to myself ... which was great because I could pester her with as many questions as  I liked without getting the usual stare-down from the crowd. They also have a little museum filled with bones. My kind of museum.

On the tour you follow the tour guide in your car to the dig site. I have always wanted to see a real excavation site. So when I say I was a bit giddy, I may be understating it tad. Seeing as they have pretty much gotten all they can out of the site, they left it as if for educational purposes. There I learned just how cool ancient creatures were here in Africa. There used to be an elephant that had four tusks. I mean they had lower jaws tusks. Come on, how cool is that. Why couldn't that one have survived? Africa also used to have a bear, and it was huge. There were also three types of giraffes. One of the was the Sivathere, and it was massive; the length from its horn to its lip was the size of an adult man. One does not understand the size of these things until you see its bones lying bare before you.

After the lecture I was able to go outside and dig around in a fossil scratch patch. There were mostly shards of bone and tortoise shell, but it was still fun. I even got to check out the lab, were they have many different bones there for comparison. I even got to hold a real fossil. Not just some mold. I can now tick that off my list of things to do before I die. if you have young kids with you who are interested in these things, then this is a place worthy of stopping at. Our natural history needs to be explored and appreciated. Scientific endeavours need to be used for their educational value. Besides, their tour guide is cute.

The dig site

African Bear Skull