Phosphate mining at Langebaanweg, about 150 kilometres north of Cape Town, cut into a bone bed that may hold the greatest diversity of five-million-year-old fossils found anywhere in the world. Sea level stood higher then and the animals lived in riverine forest, wooded savanna and along the shore: more than 300 species have been recovered, and the preservation is exceptional. Mining stopped in 1993 and the park was made out of the workings, partnered with the Iziko South African Museum. It was declared a national monument in 1996, became a provincial heritage site under the National Heritage Resources Act in 2000, and Heritage Western Cape enlarged the protected ground considerably in March 2012. The bone bed is the exhibit here; you walk the excavation rather than a gallery of casts.
Over 300 species from a five million year old coast · Early Pliocene, ~5.2 mya
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
South Africa
See it on the map
This is remote ground. The closest other places on the map are a long way off.
