A team of international experts has been studying ancient evidence left behind at the Pinnacle Point Caves in Mossel Bay and has, so far, come up with vital clues about fish-eating, tool-making Middle Stone Age humankind – and the future effects of global warming. more

The West Coast Fossil Park near Langebaan north of Cape Town has one of the world’s richest concentration of fossils dating back to the early Pliocene era 5 million years ago. Once sabre-toothed cats roamed this land, along with short-necked giraffes, four-tusked elephants and strange, three-toed horses. more

Wonderwerk Cave is what you would call an ancient rustic home. For thousands of years, humans used it for shelter. Discover what each generation has left behind: the wealth of fascinating art works, well preserved specimens of flora and fauna, ancient tools and an eerie sense of man’s first breath. more

Visit the Bernard Price Institute of Palaeontology and be amazed at their remarkable collection of fossils. South Africa is the only country in the world to have this continuous record of reptile, dinosaur and mammal fossils dating from between 300 million to 80 million years ago. more

The rippled landscape at Goudkoppie Heritage Hill is evidence of an enormous meteorite that hit the Earth around 200-million years ago. Consequences of this significant event included exposure of gold-bearing reefs that continue to form part of South Africa's vast mineral wealth. more

Head for the tourist-friendly town of Clarens, where you can walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs that roamed between 200-million and 190-million years ago, and where fossilised eggs with embryos still inside were found at nesting sites. more

Although the Vredefort Dome is the site of 1 of the largest meteor impact strikes ever recorded on Earth, the most visible meteor impact site in South Africa today is the Tswaing Crater, 40km north of Pretoria. Surrounded by dense bush, it resembles a swimming pool when viewed from afar. more

Large Jurassic dinosaurs with tiny heads lived in the Eastern Free State about 200-million-years ago, when the giant southern super-continent, Gondwana, was still intact. You can still see fossil traces of these dinosaurs in the sandstone around Clarens. more

Kirky – officially named Nqwebausaurus thwazi – is 1 of the favourite dinosaur displays in the Stone Bones of the Ancient Karoo exhibition at Cape Town’s Iziko South African Museum. His fossilised remains were found in the Eastern Cape in 1996, and he is the 1st dinosaur to bear a Xhosa name. more

Vredefort Dome: Imagine it, an asteroid the size of Table Mountain heading for earth at a speed of 20km per second. Packing more punch than multiple nuclear bombs, it penetrates 17km deep into the Earth and leaves an impact crater so large it’s been declared a World Heritage Site. more

The word ‘static’ cannot be associated with Cape Town’s South African Museum, where collections and exhibitions are still being shaped through research and exploration. There’s always something new to learn on every aspect of our planet – on land, below its surface, in the seas and in the skies. more

About the time of the Dark Ages of Europe, the royal court at Mapungubwe in Limpopo welcomed traders and men of influence from Arabia and the Far East. Only in recent decades have the fascinating details of this ancient city – now a World Heritage Site - been made public. more

If you were a goldsmith, a hunter or a trader in southern Africa eight centuries ago, then your dream might well have been to live and work at Thulamela in what is today the northern Kruger National Park. more

Makapansgat is a paleontological site of international significance northeast of Mokopane in the Limpopo province. Once a marshy wetland with an enormous diversity of plant life, human-like primates hunted huge herds of antelope, fended off sabre-tooth cats, and lived in the limestone caves of the Makapan Valley. more