Long before fossils were found outside Grahamstown in the mid-1980s, Rob Gess was bitten by the palaeontology bug.
“I grew up in Makhanda – the new name for Grahamstown – but I often visited my uncle's farm in the Colesberg district of the Karoo. I found a Dicynodon skull there when I was eight years old and I've been hooked ever since.”
Dicynodon was a herbivorous animal that was toothless except for two prominent tusks – the name means “two dog teeth”. They thrived in the Upper Permian period around 250 million years ago, but it was fossils from an earlier period – the Late Devonian period around 360 million years ago – that catapulted Rob's career.
“I was still in high school when the fossil site at Waterloo Farm was discovered in 1985. A new highway bypass was being cut through the hills south of Grahamstown as part of the government's response to anti-apartheid protests. Protesters would block the road through the town and the township. When the
