Credit for discovering the first dinosaur bones usually goes to British gentlemen for their finds between the 17th and 19th centuries in England. The English natural history scholar Robert Plot was the first of these to describe a dinosaur bone, in his 1676 book The Natural History of Oxfordshire. Paleontologists from the University of the Witwatersrand and Nelson Mandela University now present evidence that the first dinosaur bones may have been discovered in Africa as early as 500 years before Plot’s.
Humankind originated in Africa: Homo sapiens has existed for at least 300,000 years.
And the continent has a great diversity of rock outcrops, such as the Kem Kem beds in Morocco, the Fayum depression in Egypt, the Rift Valley in east Africa and the Karoo in southern Africa, containing fossils that have always been accessible to our ancestors.
So it wasn’t just likely that African people discovered fossils first. It was inevitable.
More often than not, the first dinosaur fossils supposedly discovered by scientists were actually brought to their attention by local guides.
Examples are the discovery of the gigantic dinosaurs Jobaria by the Tuaregs in Niger and Giraffatitan by the Mwera in Tanzania.
Our paper, published in the Geological Society, London, Special Publications, reviews what’s known about African indigenous knowledge of fossils.
We list fossils that appear to have long been known at various African sites, and discuss how they might have been used and interpreted by African communities before the science of paleontology came to be.
Bolahla Rock Shelter in Lesotho
One of the highlights of our paper is the archaeological site of Bolahla, a Later Stone Age rock shelter in Lesotho.
Various dating techniques indicate that the site was occupied by the Khoesan and Basotho people from the 12th to 18th centuries (1100 to 1700 CE).
The shelter itself is surrounded by hills made of consolidated sediments that were deposited under a harsh Sahara-like…
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