PaleoBios

From 1947 to 1948, paleontologists from the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), Charles Camp and Frank Peabody, led the southern branch of the University of California’s Africa Expedition. While in South Africa, Camp and Peabody collected thousands of specimens excavated from more than 70 sites, 40 of which make up the Plio-Pleistocene South African assemblage at the UCMP. Materials collected by researchers accompanying the expedition are held at numerous repositories on the University of California Berkeley campus including the UCMP, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the University of California’s Botanical Gardens.

In 2013, we curated the Plio-Pleistocene paleontological assemblage of the UCMP South Africa collection and cataloged 5,082 specimens from four primary areas: Bolt’s Farm, Buxton Limeworks, Gladysvale and Witkrans. Both invertebrates and vertebrates are found in the South African assemblage, with every vertebrate class represented, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. We provide a detailed report of the taxonomic diversity of the assemblage and describe three sites that have not yet been reported in the scientific literature: New Cave and Jackal Cave at Bolt’s Farm, and Tunnel Wall excavation at Buxton Limeworks. We also offer a historical review of the Africa Expedition and report on the current location of materials collected by members of the southern branch of the expedition and brought to the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) for holding.