A Place of Discovery
Text: Gillian Warren-Brown. Photographs: Cameron Ewart-Smith. Article from the July 2013 issue of Getaway Magazine.
The Iziko South African Museum is so much more than galleries of fascinating exhibits. Gillian Warren-Brown takes us behind the scenes where the science and research happens.
In Cape Town’s Iziko South African Museum is a fossil of two creatures about the size of miniature Dachshunds; their skeletons curled together the way puppies huddle up when they sleep. When and how did these creatures live? What happened to them? What’s the story that made it possible to see their delicate little rib bones, the digits of their fingers; bone turned to stone in a matrix of rock?
Imagining the answers to these questions turns the museum from a repository of old things into a playground for curiosity, like the final cut of a documentary. But the real magic happens behind the scenes where most of the work goes on.
I was lucky enough to be given a peek into this world. My guide was Dr Hamish Robertson, director of the natural history collections, who walked me along corridors arranged around a courtyard – the centre of construction in what has been dubbed the Courtyard Project. Hamish explained that the collection areas of the museum would be extended into this courtyard space, with a wide multilevel atrium where visitors can look into collection areas and find out about the research that happens in the background.
He hopes that this, as well as improved education facilities, including a bigger area for educational exhibitions, will help to rekindle an interest in the museum – especially for school groups.
Hamish is tall, good looking and, apart from managing the natural history collections, devotes his life to the study of ants. He also knows something about what each of the museum’s scientists is working on. When we popped our heads into various offices, where staff or post-grad students were working on computers or peering into microscopes, he told me snippets about their projects, by way of introduction.
One of them was the curator of Karoo palaeontology, Dr Roger Smith, who is sought after by international expeditions for his uncanny ability to find fossils. One of his secrets is having extremely sharp long-distance vision, which he has fine-tuned over decades of scanning the slopes of Karoo koppies. Being a geologist helps, as does having found thousands of fossils, both in South Africa and in locations as remote as Antarctica.
I asked him about the intertwined fossil skeletons. ‘They’re of juvenile mammal-like reptiles (Diictodon feliceps),’ he said. ‘I was able to identify them easily because I could compare them with more than 200 skulls I’d already collected. Their position suggested that when they were buried alive about 250 million years ago, they’d been asleep in a chamber at the end of a burrow. This fitted with a theory I developed about their living habits, about burrow living, but I had little or no evidence to prove they did.’
For 25 years he searched the Karoo for a clue to help him win his argument. Last year he found what he was looking for: a fossilised burrow 2,3 metres long, 23 centimetres across, complete with a skeleton in the chamber at the end. Case solved.
Surrounded by impressive installations, it’s easy to miss, yet this tiny piece of orange stone with its cross-hatching pattern is considered to be the world’s oldest known artwork. It’s a bit like having our own Mona Lisa on display.
Roger loves the fact that fossils from the Karoo, dating from 280 to 190 million years ago, provide an almost blow-by-blow record of the transition from reptiles to mammals through adaptations to environmental changes. ‘We have by far the best fossil record in the world of that transition,’ he said.
Before the mammal-like reptiles, such as the Diictodon, finally went extinct, they had given rise to mammals, taking the first steps to what would become us.
Another giant evolutionary step represented in the museum is an insignificant-looking chunk of ochre about the size of a large rusk. It was found in Blombos Cave on the Southern Cape coast and is dated to 77000 years ago. Dr Sven Ouzman, curator of archaeology, says it’s possibly one of the museum’s most important pieces.
It’s displayed in an elegant glass box in the rock art gallery but, because it’s surrounded by impressive installations of rock art, it’s easy to miss. Yet this tiny piece of orange stone with its cross-hatching or diamond pattern is considered to be the world’s oldest known artwork. It’s a bit like having our own Mona Lisa on display and is a key piece of evidence suggesting that a transition to greater mental ability happened in Africa.
Cupboards of collections
The objects on exhibition are carefully chosen and explained by the scientists in accompanying texts. But for almost every object on display there are countless more in the museum’s storerooms. Some are filled with shoulder-high wooden cabinets, arranged something like a library, containing hundreds of thousands of specimens.
Hamish opened one or two drawers before finding the rare treasure he was hunting: a butterfly collected by Colonel JH Bowker in the Eastern Cape’s Mbashe River Mouth just after the 19th century frontier wars. Only three of these pale yellow Deloneura immaculata have ever been found; two are preserved in the South African Museum and one is in the Natural History Museum in London.
In other, more cavernous storerooms, are rows of tall steel cupboards containing anything from fossil skulls to Stone Age tools and other bits collected on archaeological digs.
Added to these are more than one-and-a-half-million animal specimens, priceless, according to Hamish, because of what they tell us about biodiversity. Among them are type specimens, points of reference against which all variations – and biodiversity – are measured. And new specimens and species are being discovered all the time.
Pony-tailed Dr Simon van Noort, curator of entomology, is convinced that if he went into your back garden he’d probably find a new species. In fact, he’s overwhelmed with the number of insects that have been collected and need to be studied. ‘With one research assistant it would take a thousand years to deal with the backlog,’ he said.
In his office was a little glass case containing parallel rows of pins with tiny labels attached.
‘What am I looking at?’ I asked.
‘The little black dots are fig wasps,’ he said, then offered to let me see one through a microscope. The ‘dot’ was an extraordinarily beautiful iridescent creature; peacock blue, green and gold (see www.figweb.org). These minute creatures pollinate huge fig trees, which in turn provide fruit all year round to a range of vertebrates, primates, birds and bats. If the wasps were removed from the equation, Simon said, whole ecosystems would collapse.
A Watery world
This passion about the delicate balance of ecosystems also drives Dr Wayne Florence, curator of marine invertebrates. He’s probably more comfortable in a wetsuit than a pair of jeans. Although a large portion of the collections under his care have been moved to other storage places for the three-year Courtyard Project construction which will extend the museum’s working space, he led me into the bowels of the building to take a peek at the ‘wet’ (marine creatures preserved in alcohol) and ‘dry’ (fish bones and shells) collections.
‘There’s a big difference between seeing a picture and seeing the real thing. We mustn’t lose that; it’s the museum’s greatest strength.’
One treasure he fished out of a large plastic container filled with ethanol was a rock lobster – one of only three described as a new lobster species in the past 50 years globally.
Wayne is rightly proud of the collection, which, apart from a record of biodiversity, provides valuable information in decisions about marine conservation.
‘For example, there are no deep water marine protected areas,’ he said. So we’re looking at possible options.’
Wayne believes that engaging with the decision-makers is important, but he’s also big on education of children and adults, and on ensuring that the museum’s exhibitions are socially relevant. ‘For instance, we want to tell people about the species of fish they depend on, to highlight that they’re a living resource that needs to be preserved,’ he said. ‘The museum is an underutilised tool to teach creatively.’
A little later, tagging along with a group of Grade 6 and 7 pupils from Winsley Primary in Bellville, I saw in action what a visit to the museum could do for kids. They were a bit overawed, but then exhibits certainly held their attention.
‘Look,’ said young Brenwin Bernardus looking at a rockhopper penguin with long yellow feathers on its head, ‘it looks like a punk.’
‘There’s a big difference between seeing a picture in a book and seeing the real thing,’ Hamish said as I bade farewell. ‘We mustn’t lose that; it’s the museum’s greatest strength.’
The Big Five of must-sees
- The Linton Fragment. Look for the human figure that appears on South Africa’s Coat of Arms.
- The Lydenburg Heads are the earliest known examples of sculpture in Southern Africa.
- The 20,5 m blue whale skeleton in the Whale Well.
- The Euparkeria fossil, a species that is regarded as the common ancestor of Archosaurus (crocs, dinosaurs and birds).
- Carcharodontosaurus fossil cast. See the skull of arguably Earth’s largest carnivore.
For the Kids
- Walk like a Dinocephalian. Place your hands and feet on the coloured markings on the carpet in the Stone Bones exhibit and try to walk like the prehistoric creature.
- Touch the fossil forelimb of a 260-million-year-old reptile, also part of the Stone Bones exhibit.
- Are you taller than Australopithecus? Measure yourself against the shape on the pillar that shows the height of this early ancestor. Next to the Australopithecus sediba display on the first floor.
- Touch stuffed animals, such as a baboon and lion in the Discovery Room. There’s also a whale vertebra. Open weekdays 10h00 to 16h00.
Plan your visit
Getting there by car. Find the Iziko South African Museum (ISAM) at 25 Queen Victoria Street in Cape Town (GPS: S33° 55’43.44″, E18° 24’54.24″). it’s at the top end of the Company’s Gardens and is best accessed from Queen Victoria Street, where you can find parking. There’s also limited parking in front of the museum.
On foot. Access the Company’s Gardens from Orange Street (opposite the Mount Nelson Hotel), from the Queen Victoria Street entrance or from the entrance on Wale Street, next to St George’s Cathedral.
By bus. The Hop-on. Hop-off City Sightseeing Bus stops at ISAM (www.citysightseeing.co.za). The MyCiTi bus (www.myciti.org.za) Gardens-Civic Centre Route 101 stops at Michaelis and Government Avenue. Disembark and walk a short distance to ISAM.
Need to know fees. Visits cost R30 an adult and R15 a child; entry is free to children under six. A family ticket (two adults and two children aged six to 18) costs R75. South African students and pensioners pay R15 (free on Fridays with a valid student or pensioners’ card). Children and accompanying adults pay half during South African government school holidays. All discounts exclude Planetarium and Castle. School groups cost R5 a child (tel 021-481-3823, email lmvimbi@ iziko.org.za) and special exhibitions, such as the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition, from December to March, have an additional surcharge where applicable.
Opening times. Daily from 10h00 to 17h00. Closed on Workers’ Day and Christmas Day.
Construction. During construction of the Courtyard Project, segments of the museum will be cordoned off and there may be some noise, but exhibitions will remain open.
Snacks. The ISAM Cafe, near the entrance of the museum, serves good food, decadent treats and great coffee. Open daily from 10h00to 17h00.
Iziko Planetarium. The Iziko Planetarium has live lectures on the night sky every Saturday and Sunday at 13h00. Suitable for teens and adults. Daily 45-minute presentations (Monday to Friday, excluding first Monday of the month) at 09h00, 10h15, 11h30 and 12h45 during school terms. Entry costs R6 each for pupils and teachers. Book between 08h30 and 13h00 weekday mornings. The Planetarium has July school holiday activities for children.
Tel 021-481-3900, www.iziko.org.za/ museums/planetarium.
Who to contact
Tel 021-481-3800, www.iziko.org.za.
More info on the city of Cape Town | More info on the Western Cape area |
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