Congratulations to Dr Will Archer who joined the National Museum as the new Head of the Archaeology and Anthropology Department. Will’s interests are in quantitative approaches to generating high-quality data sets through the study of stone artefacts, and through excavations of new promising archaeological sites with the best recovery methods, and he has published relatively widely in some of the leading journals in the fields of archaeology and human evolution.
The National Museum is happy to report that Cape Vultures are now breeding at the Assvoëlberg colony in the Zastron area.
This is according to Museum ornithologist, Dawie de Swardt. Dawie recently conducted a monitoring visit to the area as part of his regular field work schedule. The annual ornithological fieldwork schedule covers various areas in and around the Free State. Dawie obtains specimen material for the Museum’s skin and skeletal collection.
A new species of hunter-fly (genus Coenosia) has been described from Mariepskop, Mpumalanga by Burgert Muller of the Terrestrial Invertebrates department.
The little fly measures just under 5 mm and has striking whip-like bristles and hairs on its body, which is reflected in its species name C. flagelliseta (Latin flagellum (whip) and seta (bristle)).
Modern skeletal reference collections are essential tools to help with identifying fossil bones to family and species. Recently the Florisbad Quaternary Research Station (FQRS) entered into a partnership with the Zoology department of the McGregor Museum to collect and exchange material for our modern reference collections. This process meant clearing out material collected over many years by staff of the McGregor museum, including road-kills and specimens brought in by the general public. Material which has been housed in their freezers, but which is no longer appropriate for their own collections.
Dawie de Swardt, National Museum ornithologist conducted fieldwork at the farm Armika, along the Vetrivier in the Wesselsbron area. Dawie has been visiting this site since 2008 for bird ringing and specimen collection.