The Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, formerly the Transvaal Museum, is a

natural history museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

situated in

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foothi ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

. It is located on

Paul Kruger Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger (; 10 October 1825 – 14 July 1904) was a South African politician. He was one of the dominant political and military figures in 19th-century South Africa, and President of the South African Republic (or ...

Street, between Visagie and Minnaar Streets, opposite the

Pretoria City Hall Pretoria City Hall is a large building in Pretoria city centre, South Africa, which was built in 1931 and inaugurated in 1935 in order to celebrate the city-status of Pretoria obtained in 1931. It is located on the Paul Kruger Street south of ...

. The museum was established in 1895 by the former

South African Republic The South African Republic ( nl, Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, abbreviated ZAR; af, Suid-Afrikaanse Republiek), also known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer Republic in Southern Africa which existed from 1852 to 1902, when i ...

, also known as the Transvaal. In 2010 it was one of the founding Museums of

Ditsong Museums of South Africa Ditsong Museums is an amalgamation of eight museums in the Pretoria and Johannesburg environs in the Gauteng Province. The museums "have diverse collections covering the fields of fauna and flora, palaeontology Paleontology (), also spelled ...

Collections

The museum curates large collections of

Plio-Pleistocene The Plio-Pleistocene is an informally described geological pseudo-period, which begins about 5 million years ago (Mya) and, drawing forward, combines the time ranges of the formally defined Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs—marking from about 5&n ...

fossils, including hominids from

Sterkfontein Sterkfontein (Afrikaans for ''Strong Spring'') is a set of limestone caves of special interest to paleo-anthropologists located in Gauteng province, about northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa in the Muldersdrift area close to the town of ...

Swartkrans Swartkrans is a fossil-bearing cave designated as a South African National Heritage Site, located about from Johannesburg. It is located in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site and is notable for being extremely rich in archaeological ma ...

and

Kromdraai Kromdraai Conservancy is a protected conservation park located to the south-west of Gauteng province in north-east South Africa. It is in the Muldersdrift area not far from Krugersdorp. Etymology Its name is derived from Afrikaans meaning "Cro ...

in the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...

; the

Cradle of Humankind The Cradle of Humankind is a paleoanthropological site and is located about northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, in the Gauteng province. Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, the site is home to the largest concentration of h ...

, as well as

late Permian Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effect, ...

therapsids (proto-mammals from the Karoo). The most complete skull of an ''Australopithecus africanus'' specimen,

Mrs Ples __NOTOC__ Mrs. Ples is the popular nickname for the most complete skull of an ''Australopithecus africanus'' ever found in South Africa. Many ''Australopithecus'' fossils have been found near Sterkfontein, about northwest of Johannesburg, in a r ...

, is on display in the museum. In addition, the Transvaal museum houses extensive collections of mammals, birds, reptiles, and invertebrates.

History

It was founded as the ''Staatsmuseum'' (

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gr ...

for "State Museum") of the ZAR on 1 December 1892, and J. W. B. Gunning was appointed as its first director. For the first two years after it was founded, the museum was located in the

Ou Raadsaal The Ou Raadsaal (English: ''Old Council Hall'') is a historic building in Pretoria, South Africa, located on the south side of Church Square. The Ou Raadsaal housed the Volksraad, the parliament of the South African Republic, from 1891 to 1902 ...

parliament building.University of Pretoria
/ref> The Transvaal Museum was amalgamated with the Pretoria-based National Cultural History Museum (also called the

African Window The African Window is a building in Pretoria, Gauteng, which houses the Ditsong National Museum of Cultural History (DNMCH) of South Africa. The DNMCH was amalgamated with the Pretoria-based Transvaal Museum for Natural History (now the Ditson ...

) and the South African National Museum of Military History (situated in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...

) on 1 April 1999 to form the Northern Flagship Institution. The NFI was officially renamed Ditsong Museums of South Africa in April 2010. The Transvaal Museum was renamed Ditsong National Museum of Natural History on the same date. Ditsong is managed by a chief executive officer and a board, which replaced the three separate previous museum boards. left, ''Australopithecus africanus'' (Sts 60).

References

External links

Official website360 degree Virtual Tour of the Transvaal Museum
{{authority control Natural history museums in South Africa Museums in Pretoria History of Pretoria