Evolution exhibition

September 2, 2009 - January 31, 2010

Maropeng has extended the evolution display, Digging for an understanding, due to its popularity.

The display was launched in celebration of Heritage Month, on September 2 at 13h00.

The display, covers a wide range of topics, from Darwin to gorgonopsians, presenting real evidence that demonstrates the theory of evolution and that all life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor.

Maropeng is famed for its exhibits of original fossils that shed light on our distant past and where we came from. But for scientists to truly understand and explain the fossils, they have to rely on an overall framework of thought – and that is what we call the theory of evolution.

It is for this reason, and also to mark the bicentennial of the birthday of Charles Darwin, that we have chosen to have an exhibition that explains the theory of evolution. Evolution is new in the local school curriculum and for many it’s controversial, yet the evidence for it is solid and unequivocal.

Included in the display of material to show the process of evolution will be Stw 505, an Australopithecus africanus fossil from Sterkfontein, as well as Australopithecine material from Makapansgat. There will also be a 2.5-million-year-old fossil rodent, a 255-million-year-old gorgonopsian (a large predator) and a 100-year-old copy of Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species.

Entrance to the Original Fossil Exhibition is included in the ticket price for the Maropeng Visitor Centre. For detailed admission costs, click here. 

“Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.” (Charles Darwin, 1859)