SA Mint's gold coin shows prehistoric 'mammal'

By Adrienne Carlisle

GRAHAMSTOWN -- Freelance journalist Ian Stiff won a valuable limited-edition gold coin from the SA Mint's palaeontological series at the launch of the coin at Scifest 99 yesterday.

The attractive little coin is a quarter-ounce of 24-carat gold, featuring the skeleton and skull of the 240-million-year-old Thrinaxodon.

The animal was disco-vered by the legendary fossil finder, Professor James Kitching, of the Wits Institute in Antarctica in 1970.

Only 999 other coins in this series exist and will initially sell for about R700.

The value of the coin in the secondary market often doubles, said SA Mint coin designer Ms Natanya van Niekerk at the launch yesterday.

The Thrinaxodon coin is the third in the limited-edition palaeontological series.

The first, which was produced in 1997, featured the famous hominid skull known as Mrs Ples.

The second, in 1998, used the coelacanth as its subject.

"Now with Thrinaxodon we are reinforcing the leading role South Africa has played in the science of palaeontology," Van Niekerk said.

Yesterday the Wits University Bernard Price Institute of Palaeontology (BPI) unveiled its own first life-size reconstruction of the Thrinaxodon.

This was a rather scruffy but predatory little creature which looked a bit like a meercat.

BPI's Marion Duncan said the mammal-like Thrinaxodon was an exciting indication that the Triassic period was the ''dawn'' of mammals.