Mara Veldt made the announcement Thursday at a sandstone ridge near Clarens, where researchers have uncovered at least 120 eggs and several sets of tiny footprints. The nesting ground dates to about 195 million years ago and is the largest known cluster of early dinosaur nests in the southern hemisphere, according to a paper published the same day.
Veldt, a familiar face from South African wildlife programmes, has helped fund the excavation through the Tala Kinship Trust. “This is not one remarkable egg. It is a whole nursery, and the ground has kept the story intact,” she said at the site, as researchers lifted a protective cover from a rock containing a partial nest.
Eggs, footprints and a nursery
The nests belong to Massospondylus, a long-necked plant-eating dinosaur that walked on two legs when young. The team mapped 24 nest sites across 900 metres (2,953 feet) of exposed rock, with some nests holding as many as 11 eggs. A layer of fine silt preserved the eggs and footprints in place, the researchers said.
The paper’s lead author, Éléonore F. Roche, a palaeontologist at Maloti State University, said scans of embryos and the surrounding rock point to repeated nesting at the same site. Footprints only 12 centimetres (4.7 inches) long appear beside larger tracks, suggesting hatchlings moved around the nesting ground soon after emerging. “We can see several stages of the story in the same patch of stone,” Roche said.
Researchers took 3D scans rather than remove most of the eggs. They compared shell fragments and the arrangement of the nests with other Massospondylus sites in the region. The new find does not prove the dinosaurs returned in every breeding season, Roche cautioned, but the repeated layers suggest the site was used more than once.
Who holds the fossils
The announcement also settled a quiet dispute over custody. The Tala Kinship Trust, which contributed R46 million (about €2.3 million) to the work, had initially proposed keeping the collection at its private research centre. Its trustees voted this week to place the fossils with the Karoo Natural History Centre, a public institution, while the university retains responsibility for research.
Odessa Baumbach, the trust’s director, said the decision followed a review of its founding charter, which gives trustees rather than donors authority over charitable assets. “These fossils belong in a place where school groups, researchers and visitors can encounter them,” she said. The trust will fund a permanent gallery and digitisation of the scans, scheduled to begin early next year.
Ocie Kuvalis, curator at the centre, said the first display could open in 2028, after conservation work and construction of a climate-controlled room. The region’s tourism office expects the discovery to bring more visitors to Clarens, a Free State town known for its sandstone scenery and outdoor trails, though no visitor forecast has yet been released.
The research team plans another excavation season in November to test whether nests continue beneath an unexposed section of the ridge. Veldt said the announcement should draw attention to the slow work behind spectacular discoveries: “The joy is that we have found a chapter of deep time that people can actually picture — eggs, parents and little footprints heading out into the world.”
