| Activity | Discoverer of fossil vertebrates in South Africa
British geologist, born in Scotland. In 1820 he emigrated to Cape Colony, and carried on for some years the business of a saddler at Graaf Reinet. During the Kaffir War in 183334 he took command of a provisional battalion raised for the defence of the frontier. Later he was engaged to construct a military road through the Ecca Pass, and displayed engineering talents which led to his being permanently employed as surveyor of military roads under the corps of Royal Engineers. This occupation created an interest in geology, which was fostered in 1837 by the loan of Lyells Elements. He discovered the remains of many reptilia, including the Dicynodon, which was obtained from the Karroo Beds near Fort Beaufort and described by Owen. Devoting all his spare energies to geological studies, Bain prepared in 1852 the first comprehensive geological map of South Africa, a work of great merit, which was published by the Geological Society of London in 1856.
At the close of the Sixth Frontier War in the Eastern Cape (1834-35) Andrew Geddes Bain, a settler of Scottish descent, was appointed to the post of Assistant Engineer in the Royal Engineers to supervise the construction of military roads on the frontier, in the country around Grahamstown. His first assignment in 1837 was the construction of the "Queen's Road", between Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort through the Ecca Pass. Bain developed a keen interest in the then fairly new science of geology, as his daily work brought him into close contact with landforms, rocks, minerals and fossils. He was the first person to attempt to place the rock types he encountered over the vast tracts of the Cape Colony into a geological framework.
Bain the elder dabbled in many things: he wrote articles for the local papers, composed poetry, tried his hand at art and ran his saddlery. He often travelled by horseback to explore the interior of South Africa.
Although he had no formal qualifications in engineering, in the 1820s Bain offered to build a road up the Ouberg, outside Graaff-Reinet, and soon after that supervised the building of the Van Ryneveld Pass nearby. These two passes launched Bain's road-building career.
During the Frontier Wars Bain joined the military and, after a while, was appointed assistant engineer in the Royal Engineer Corps. His job was to supervise the construction of military roads along the frontier and his first project was to build what is now known as the Queen's Road, which links Fort Beaufort and Grahamstown.
All the work Bain did on the roads sparked a fascination with geology and fossils. He made a number of discoveries and found what is probably his most important fossil while working on the Queen's Road near Fort Beaufort - the skull of what he called the Blinkwater Monster. It's now referred to in scientific circles as the Dicynodon bainii - the earliest known vertebrate to walk upright. Today Andrew Geddes Bain is often referred to as the 'father of South African geology'. |