Staff

Senior Specialist Museum Scientist
and Head of Department

James Brink

James S. Brink DPhil jbrink [at] nasmus [dot] co [dot] za

In 1978 James Brink received a BA degree (Archaeology, Anthropology & Latin) and in 1980 BA Honours (Archaeozoology) from the University of Stellenbosch. He was appointed in 1983 as a junior Researcher in Archaeozoology at the National Museum. Based at the newly established Florisbad Quaternary Research Station, he studied the fossil animal remains from the new excavations at Florisbad, as well as the old fossil collections from this site. He completed this study in 1987, for which he received the degree MA (Archaeozoology) from the University of Stellenbosch and the Frank Schweitzer postgraduate student prize (Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch). He also received study grants from the Human Sciences Research Council (now incorporated in the National Research Foundation, NRF) and from the German Foreign Exchange program (DAAD) to study at a German University. In 1987 and 1988 he completed a two-semester course at the Institut für Palaeoanatomie, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Munich, which included courses on the comparative osteology of Old World mammals, the history of domestication in the Old World, the comparative osteology of Nile fishes and an introductory course in Latin and Greek as used in scientific nomenclature. In 1992 he received the degree BA Honours in Latin from the University of the Free State, while preparing for a comparative osteological study of alcelaphine bovids and the evolution of wildebeest. Through funding received from the Centre for Science Development (CSD, now part of the NRF) he invited Prof. R. Grün (Canberra) to do a comprehensive Electron Spin Resonance / Optically Stimulated Luminescence (ESR/OSL) study of the Florisbad deposits and fossils, including the human skull. In the process a pioneering technique of non-destructive ESR dating was developed in order to date the molar associated with the human skull. This work, published in 1996, provided the temporal framework needed for studying the alcelaphine fossil record in southern Africa. In 2001, as part of this study, he worked for two months in the Palaeontology Laboratory of the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, on North African alcelaphine fossils. In 2005 he received the degree DPhil from the University of Stellenbosch for his study on the evolution of the black wildebeest (Connochaetes gnou) and modern large mammal faunas in southern Africa. James is currently expanding his interests to the comparison of the large mammal record of East Africa with that of southern Africa. He is a NRF rated scientist, with a C2 rating.

Since March 1984 James has been in charge of the research activities at the Florisbad Quaternary Research Station. In this time he oversaw the founding of an extensive osteological reference collection and the expansion of the Quaternary fossil vertebrate collections through field work at key sites, such as Florisbad, Cornelia-Uitzoek and Erfkroon.

Chief Research Assistant

Sharon Holt is a National Museum Staff Member in the Florisbad Quaternary Research department

Sharon Holt MSc sholt [at] nasmus [dot] co [dot] za

Sharon Holt obtained her BA degree at the University of Pretoria in 1991 and her BA Honours (Archaeology) in 1995. She obtained her MSc degree in Archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2009. Thesis title: The faunal remains from the Makgabeng Plateau, Limpopo Province. Her career started as a Research Assistant in the Archaeology Department of the National Museum in 1992. In 2006 she was transferred to the Florisbad Quaternary Research Department, where she is currently curating the modern mammal osteological collection housed at Florisbad.