Unearthing the fossil history of Bolt’s Farm – photo essay

November 18, 2011 – Linda Piegl

Bolt’s Farm, located 2.5km south-west of Sterkfontein Caves, has a wealth of animal fossil deposits of different ages, and a palaeontological history spanning 75 years.

Back in 1936, Professor Robert Broom, one of founders of palaeoanthropology in South Africa, found the first fossils at Bolt’s Farm. Over time, it has become known as the Kingdom of the Big Cats because of the discovery there of many big cat and sabre-toothed cat (Dinofelis) fossils.

Waypoint 160 excavation site

Image courtesy Ditsong National Museum of Natural History

This is a fossil site at Bolt’s Farm, believed to be the oldest fossil deposit in the Cradle of Humankind. It has been dated at around 4.5-million years in age, based on the analysis of rodent remains found there.

Milo A excavation site

Image courtesy Ditsong National Museum of Natural History

Another fossil deposit at Bolt’s Farm that has yielded pig remains as old as 3-million years

Dinofelis skull

Image courtesy Ditsong National Museum of Natural History

Dinofelis (the “terrible cat”) was a sabre-toothed cat that lived between 5-million and 1.4-million years ago. It was between the size of a lion and a leopard

Dinofelis reconstruction

Image courtesy Ditsong National Museum of Natural History

This is a reconstruction of what Dinofelis probably looked like, with a fossil skull from Bolt’s Farm facing it.

Bolt’s Farm exhibition at Ditsong National Museum of Natural History

Image courtesy Ditsong National Museum of Natural History

Fossils from the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History’s collection from Bolt’s Farm will be exhibited at Maropeng, as part of the Broom Colloquium, on November 26, 2011. Fossils on display will include primates, carnivores including Dinofelis

, rodents and pigs.

Book online for the Broom Colloquium

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