The Fossil Trail in the Karoo National Park has been extensively upgraded was designed by Cape Town palaeontologist Dr John Almond of Natura Viva, and features ned 23 new information plaques and added a number of new rock and fossil specimens and casts to the trail. “The aim is to use modern reconstructions and palaeobiological information to bring back to life the amazing extinct wildlife that thrived in ancient Karoo during the Late Permian Period some 255 million years ago,” says Dr. Almond. “At that time – about 35 million years before dinosaurs evolved – the first complex ecosystems appeared on land. A variety of herbivores, lizard-like insect-eaters, and sabre-toothed super-predators are preserved in the Permian rocks of the Karoo.”

Country: South Africa