Charting the fossils of the Great Karoo: a history of tetrapod biostratigraphy in the Lower Beaufort Group, South Africa

Abstract

The interest in the fossil remains of the Beaufort Group and their stratigraphic significance goes back as far as the earliest geological studies in South Africa in the early 19th century. By the 1890s, the understanding of fossil distributions in the sedimentary rocks of the Karoo allowed the formulation of the first tetrapod biostratigraphic subdivisions. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the highest resolution subdivisions of the mostly undifferentiated fluvial sediments of the Beaufort Group have been biostratigraphic. More recent biostratigraphic studies in the Lower Beaufort Group have been crucial in understanding terrestrial ecological change in the Middle and Late Permian, and continue to be a leading area of research in South Africa palaeontology.