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Captured in Stone.
The Garden Route has one of the highest densities of fossil trackways in the world, boasting over 320 Pleistocene trackways and footprints of over 20 species, including early Homo sapiens.
Ranging in age of between 35,000 and 300,000 years, the trackways include invertebrate, avian, reptilian, mammalian and hominid tracks and footprints.
Registered on dunes, and fossilized in Pleistocene fossil dunes, most of the trackways and traces are exposed by ocean erosion along the shoreline.
Ideal Medium
A vegetated fossil dune system extends along the shoreline between Kaaimans River mouth and Brenton on Sea. Within this Pleistocene aeolianite, a range of fossil traces are embedded, and at various exposed and eroded sites trackways can be seen.
Species Trail
Within these fossil dunes, there are a examples of a wide selection of fossil traces of both extinct and extant species of fauna. In addition to the wildlife tracks, there are two significant sites of hominid tracks as well as amaglyphs, intentional markings which have been interpreted as a form of communication by early Homo sapiens.
Trackway Tour
View these remarkable fossil tracks on a Trackway Tour with Mark, a co researcher of the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, an learn about how trackways are formed, and the animals that used to roam in the region and the insights that the species record provides about climate change, sea level changes and origins of human intelligence.
Tours are conducted on demand and are maintained to group sizes of 15 or less. Our standard tour is an approximately 6km hike along the beach, visiting six major sites and checking in on some minor sites.
Logistics of the trackway Tour
The tours are timed for low tide and neap tide phases.
We meet at the Platbank parking area east of Sedgefield. A location pin will be shared when a reservation is made.
Cost : R750.00/person
For more details and to make a reservation, please contact Mark via email |
