Sundays River

A few weeks ago, my friend and fellow palaeo-dork Roger Benson and his lovely wife Hilary came to visit from Oxford, UK. We planned a trip down to the Eastern Cape, with the goal of finding plesiosaur fossils (kind of like the Loch Ness monster, but real and now extinct).

On our 700 mile drive down from Johannesburg to the Sundays River Formation (which preserves the plesiosaur fossils), we stopped to look at some dinosaur outcrop. Here we are collecting volcanic ashes.

And here's our accomodation while we collected those ashes, a beautiful rustic farmhouse made out of local stone. No, that's not Kelsey but rather Hilary tending the beer cooler.

Roger, Hilary, and the butt of my graduate student Blair collecting volcanic ash.

After a day of collecting volcanics, we headed south for a week of looking for plesiosaurs. The Sundays River Formation preserves a series of rocks that represent a 140 million-year-old tidal estuary, leading into deeper offshore waters. Interestingly, similar systems are still present on the Eastern Cape today. Coastal erosion has made these outcrops especially beautiful.

In addition to being the land of plesiosaur fossils, the Eastern Cape is also the land of Aloe and the land of Dairy Cattle.

Many of the Sundays River fossils are found in abandoned brick quarries like this one. It's funny that we had so much trouble finding bricks for our patio (see our other blog post) given that this quarry must have furnished the entire continent of Africa with bricks. 

Of course, not all the quarries are abandoned.

 

No trip to the Eastern Cape is complete without a stop at my favorite butcher shop in Kirkwood (proprietor Jan Swart). Best chili bites in South Africa.

And then again, no trip to the Eastern Cape is complete without a stop at the Kirkwood Cliffs for a cocktail and some fossil prospecting.

Our spirits renewed, we visited yet another brick quarry, and began splitting shale to find fossils.

Success! This plant fossil is among the first known from deep-water deposits of the Sundays River.

The ubiquitous oyster still never fails to disappoint. This is a form of Gryphaeia, which probably would have gone well with a bit of champagne or a shot of tequila.

Best of all, however, were the exceedingly rare crayfish. This beauty was found by my friend Cameron Penn-Clarke.

We wrapped up our fossil trip by taking a few hours off to view the wildlife at Addo National Elephant Park. 

This fellow is a Leopard Tortoise, a common park resident. A famous member of this species who lived in the park was named "Domkrag" (Car-Jack). He weighed in at 134 pounds and was famous for rubbing up against car tires. 

Other pleasant wildlife included this Cape Weaver....

But of course, you're all waiting to see ELEPHANTS! This little guy kept putting his trunk on other members of his family, as if to say hello.

And thus ended our Sundays River trip. No plesiosaurs, but many elephants and one hell of a crayfish.