Dr. Matthew Mason: Further Information...
University Physiologist Tel: +44 (0)1223 333829, Fax: +44 (0)1223 333840, E-mail: mjm68@cam.ac.uk
Mason, M.J., Bennett, N.C. & Pickford, M. (2019) A fossil chrysochlorid skull in the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History: Robert Broom’s missing specimen unearthed? Palaeontologia Africana 53: 207-218.
My colleague Martin Pickford was rooting through a draw of fossils in the Ditsong National Museum in South Africa when he found what seemed to be a fossil golden mole skull, mostly still covered in rocky matrix but with a few parts showing. I CT-scanned this fossil and painstakingly reconstructed the skull. We argue in this paper that the skull is actually a fossil described by famous palaeontologist Robert Broom in 1948, but later lost. Broom thought he skull was likely from an extinct genus called Proamblysomus. Our skull does seem to tally with the very brief available descriptions of Proamblysomus, but it also bears many similarities to certain living species of Amblysomus, so more work needs to be done to confirm whether Proamblysomus is a "real" group worthy of its own genus.
Robert Broom, best known for his discovery of australopithecine fossils in South Africa, helped to found the journal Palaeontologia Africana, in which we published this paper.
Please click here to access this paper from the Palaeontologia Africana website.