Malapa Fossil Excavation

About this tour

Death traps and bone collectors, streams that disappear into vast underground lakes, and rock-eating termites with magnesium mandibles. All this and more on a Malapa tour.

The Malapa tour is an exclusive private guided tour in an open game drive vehicle, giving guests the chance to experience two famous fossil dig sites in the heart of the Cradle of Humankind. The two world-famous fossil sites, Gladysvale and Malapa, are in the Nash Nature Reserves, which make up the core of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. It is the only private guided tour designated to visit these two sites.

We also visit the Malapa Museum and explore the geological origins of the region and the three million year fossil-bearing history of this wilderness. You will learn about famous fossils such as Australopithecus sediba, and see reconstructions of the ancestor of wild dogs, false sabre-tooth cats and giant hyenas that once roamed the highveld. With films, interactive displays, dioramas and reconstructions, the museum is a not-to-be-missed introduction to our deep human journey.

Together the reserves cover almost 9,000 hectares and protect some of the largest and most pristine high-altitude dolomitic grasslands, second only to the Cape Floral Kingdom (fynbos) in floral diversity. The reserve is home to leopard, brown hyena and antelope such as eland, blesbok, kudu, blue wildebeest and red hartebeest, all within sight of the second-largest urban area on the African continent.