James Kitching
Encyclopedia
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n vertebrate palaeontologist
Vertebrate paleontology
Vertebrate paleontology is a large subfield to paleontology seeking to discover the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord, through the study of their fossilized remains...
and regarded as one of the world’s greatest fossil finders.
Career
His work in the southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, led to the establishment of one of the world's finest fossil collections, housed at the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological ResearchBernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research
The Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research is part of the School of Geosciences in the Faculty of Science of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa...
(BPI) in Johannesburg.
He contributed greatly to the Karoo
Karoo
The Karoo is a semi-desert region of South Africa. It has two main sub-regions - the Great Karoo in the north and the Little Karoo in the south. The 'High' Karoo is one of the distinct physiographic provinces of the larger South African Platform division.-Great Karoo:The Great Karoo has an area of...
palaeontology of southern Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, and Gondwana
Gondwana
In paleogeography, Gondwana , originally Gondwanaland, was the southernmost of two supercontinents that later became parts of the Pangaea supercontinent. It existed from approximately 510 to 180 million years ago . Gondwana is believed to have sutured between ca. 570 and 510 Mya,...
, and was an authority on the stratigraphic and distributional relationships of Permo-Triassic reptiles from South Africa. He published more than fifty papers and books on various facets of palaeontology. His contribution to Karoo palaeontology of southern Africa and Gondwana, earned him international recognition.
Kitching also studied Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
mammals. In this regard he excavated and researched fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
s from several cave sites, the most notable being the Cave of Hearths and the limeworks at Makapansgat
Makapansgat
Makapansgat is an archeological location within the Makapansgat and Zwartkrans Valleys, northeast of Mokopane in Limpopo province, South Africa. It is an important paleontological site, with the local limeworks containing Australopithecus-bearing deposits dating to between 3.0 and 2.6 million years...
where he discovered the type specimen of what Professor Raymond Dart
Raymond Dart
Raymond Arthur Dart was an Australian anatomist and anthropologist, best known for his involvement in the 1924 discovery of the first fossil ever found of Australopithecus africanus, an extinct hominid closely related to humans, at Taung in the North of South Africa in the province...
described as a new species of the "ape man" Australopithecus
Australopithecus
Australopithecus is a genus of hominids that is now extinct. From the evidence gathered by palaeontologists and archaeologists, it appears that the Australopithecus genus evolved in eastern Africa around 4 million years ago before spreading throughout the continent and eventually becoming extinct...
, A. prometheus in 1947. This is now considered a synonym of the type species, A. africanus, which Dart described in 1925.
Together with Professor Raymond Dart
Raymond Dart
Raymond Arthur Dart was an Australian anatomist and anthropologist, best known for his involvement in the 1924 discovery of the first fossil ever found of Australopithecus africanus, an extinct hominid closely related to humans, at Taung in the North of South Africa in the province...
, he undertook pioneering taphonomic research on the bone accumulations at Makapansgat. These projects entailed spending time in the Netherlands, Belgium and France to study Palaeolithic mammalian faunas; he was also involved in the analysis of fossils from Pinhole Cave in England.
Despite not having had a standard undergraduate academic background, he was permitted by the Senate of the University of the Witwatersrand
University of the Witwatersrand
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg is a South African university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University...
to register for a Master of Science degree. For his research on Karoo fossils, completed in 1972, he was awarded a doctorate. Having refined the biostratigraphy of the rocks of the Beaufort Group
Beaufort Group
The Beaufort Group is the third of the main subdivisions of the Karoo Supergroup of geological strata in Southern Africa. It follows conformably after the Ecca Group and consists essentially of sandstones and shales, deposited in the Karoo Basin from the Middle Permian to the early part of the...
in South Africa, he started a major collecting project in the Triassic and Jurassic rocks of the Elliot and Clarens Formations in South Africa, and published the first biostratigraphic scheme for these lithological units as well.
Awards and honours
At the time of his retirement at the age of 68 in 1990, Professor James Kitching was Reader in Karoo Biostratigraphy and also Director of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research. Subsequently he was appointed Honorary Research Professorial Fellow at the Institute, a position he held until his death. He received numerous national and international awards including honorary doctorates from UPE and Wits, the Gold Award of the Zoological Society of South Africa, The Draper Award of the Geological Society of South Africa, honorary life membership of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in the United States and the Palaeontological Society of Southern Africa, and most recently the prestigious Morris Skinner Award of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.Early life
His introduction to fossils and collecting started at the age of six, when he scoured the countryside around Nieu-Bethesda, where he grew up, to find specimens for Robert BroomRobert Broom
Professor Robert Broom was a Scottish South African doctor and paleontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University of Glasgow...
. A year later he discovered the type specimen of Youngopsis kitchingi Broom. This fossil was the first of many new species which he would present to science in later years.
When the University of the Witwatersrand set up the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, he was appointed as the first member of staff on 26 October 1945 and mandated to collect fossils from the Karoo. His first collecting trip was to the Graaff-Reinet district where he had spent his youth.
Footnotes
A prominent rock ridge (85°12'S 177°06'W) on the west side of Shackleton Glacier, between Bennett Platform and Matador Mountain, in the Queen Maud MountainsQueen Maud Mountains
The Queen Maud Mountains are a major group of mountains, ranges and subordinate features of the Transantarctic Mountains, lying between the Beardmore and Reedy Glaciers and including the area from the head of the Ross Ice Shelf to the polar plateau in Antarctica...
in Antarctica is officially mapped 'Kitching Ridge' in his honour.
Invited to join the Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
Institute of Polar Studies 1970-71 geological party to the Queen Maud Mountains
Queen Maud Mountains
The Queen Maud Mountains are a major group of mountains, ranges and subordinate features of the Transantarctic Mountains, lying between the Beardmore and Reedy Glaciers and including the area from the head of the Ross Ice Shelf to the polar plateau in Antarctica...
as part of the US Antarctic Research Programme, he, together with James (Jim) Collinson, was the first person to identify and collect therapsid ("mammal-like reptile") fossils there, of Lystrosaurus
Lystrosaurus
Lystrosaurus was a genus of Late Permian and Early Triassic Period dicynodont therapsids, which lived around 250 million years ago in what is now Antarctica, India, and South Africa...
Zone age, confirming the former continental link between southern Africa and Antarctica.
In 1977 James Kitching recovered seven Massospondylus
Massospondylus
Massospondylus and ) is a genus of prosauropod dinosaur from the early Jurassic Period . It was described by Sir Richard Owen in 1854 from remains found in South Africa, and is thus one of the first dinosaurs to have been named...
eggs that had been exposed by roadmaking operations in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park
Golden Gate Highlands National Park
Golden Gate Highlands National Park is located in Free State, Republic of South Africa, near the Lesotho border. It covers an area of 340 km² . The park's most notable features are its golden, ochre, and orange-hued deeply eroded sandstone cliffs and outcrops, especially the Brandwag rock...
in South Africa. In January 2000, Professor Robert Reisz from the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
at Mississauga in Canada was on a research visit to South Africa and borrowed the fossil eggs to take back to Canada. Diane Scott of his laboratory carried out the difficult preparation under a high magnification microscope. Hans Sues, a Smithsonian palaeontologist who helped analyse the 190-million-year-old eggs — the oldest from a vertebrate animal ever discovered — confirmed that Kitching had been correct in his identification of the eggs. The embryos are so well preserved, that they have yielded remarkable insights into dinosaur biology and behaviour. They are the oldest evidence for caregiving among dinosaurs in that the animals' undeveloped teeth suggest that Massospondylus hatchlings needed help in feeding.
He married Betty Kitching and had a family of 1 son and 2 daughters.
Sources
- Tribute to James Kitching by Bruce Rubidge & Mike Raath (Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological ResearchBernard Price Institute for Palaeontological ResearchThe Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research is part of the School of Geosciences in the Faculty of Science of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa...
)