The Cheetah


March Flower: South Africa

April Fool, Blood flower, Paintbrush Lily, PowderPuff Lily, King-of-Candia, Picushion 

Flowering in late summer
A Summer surprise popping from bulbs! The bulb contains coccinine which is an alkaloid with a known convulsive action.
Flowers
Fresh leaves were applied as a dressing to septic ulcers and sores and also to the pustules of anthrax. A diuretic was made from the sliced bulb boiled in vinegar and mixed with honey. Asthma was also treated with this mixture. www.plantzafrica.com

Paleontologists Uncover World’s Oldest Dinosaur Nesting Site

 
This is an artist’s interpretation, showing 190 million year old nests, eggs, hatchlings and adults of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus in Golden Gate Highlands National Park, South Africa. 
Credit: Artwork by Julius Csotonyi
Paleontologists Uncover World8217s Oldest Dinosaur Nesting
Close-up of embryonic skeleton of Massospondylus from clutch of eggs at the nesting site.  
Credit: Photo by D. Scott

Legendary fossil hunter

James Kitching found thousands of important pre-dinosaur fossils from more than 250-million years ago in the Karoo (South Africa) , and also helped prove the Theory of Ccontinental Drift: that Southern Africa was once part of a much larger land mass that included Antarctica, parts of the Americas and Australia.

There was a lot of debate about whether Gondwana Continent (South America, southern Africa and Antarctica) had ever existed. 

So Kitching was recruited to fly down to Antarctica and look for fossils common to both continents. And it was there, on a rocky snowy shelf, that he found the fossilised skeleton of Thrinaxodon, just like the one he had found near Bethulie in the southern Free State province of South Africa.

Historical Period: Early Triassic (250-245 million years ago)

Size and Weight: About 20 inches long and a few pounds

Diet: Meat