The Saldanha skull from Hopefield, South Africa.

The site. During the past 25 years a number of fossilized animal skeletal remains had been submitted by farmers and District Surgeons of the south-western coastal area of the Cape Province to the Cape Town Museum and the above department, but no scientist had subsequently investigated those sites. In May, 1951, I was instrumental in locating an extensive fossil site on the farm “Elandsfontein” about 10 miles from Hopefield, which is a small village situated 90 miles north of Cape Town and about 15 miles east of Saldanha Bay (figure 1). Here, in the middle of the sandy vel’d, situate’d 300 feet above sea level, is a veritable Solutrean-like accumulation of fossilized material lying on the floors of wind-scoured kloofs or depressions between stationary vegetated or moving sanddunes. Ridges of ferricrete cut diagonally across the length of the site, and, in places, the dunes are capped by massive calCrete mounds or flat boulders of partly silicified surface lime-