MOSSEL BAY NEWS - A first for Mossel Bay is the hosting of the 22nd Biennial Southern African Society for Quaternary Research (SASQUA) Congress, which will be held in town from 28 January to 1 February at the Point Hotel.
Two events are open to the public and admission is free.
The organisers have a total of 59 registered delegates attending the congress, who come from South Africa, Australia, France, Namibia, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
The keynote presentation at the congress will be by Professor Curtis W Marean (Arizona State University and Nelson Mandela University), titled: The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain - Unravelling its ecology teaches us how to do Palaeoscience.
There will be an optional field trip for the conference guests to Pinnacle Point and the interesting quaternary outcrops in the area.
SASQUA is "focused on the understanding of quaternary environmental change, encompassing interdisciplinary work in the fields of geology, archaeology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate in the Southern Hemisphere during the past 2.5 million years". Understanding the quaternary has huge advantages in managing processes that will influence the earth's future, according to the society.
Public lecture
If you wish to "take a journey to the seafloor" of Mossel Bay and surrounding areas, and learn how the seafloor holds clues in past climates, environments, and an influence on ancient landscape use by our early ancestors, the first lecture will explain sea-level change and the character of the continental shelf through time from a basis of geophysics and geology.
This first engagement will be a public lecture to explore "Mossel Bay's Lost World: Reconstructing the extinct landscape submerged by the sea", taking place on Tuesday, 29 January at 18:00 at the Dias Museum. "We have mapped, scuba dived and cored the seafloor of Mossel Bay to answer complex scientific questions," says a marine geologist from the Council for Geoscience and from Nelson Mandela University, Dr Hayley Cawthra, who will present the lecture.
Physical theatre production
The second engagement, Walking Tall, is a theatre performance regarding the ancient history of humankind in nature.
Through movement, it illustrates the story of how life and humankind developed from shared ancestors into the diverse group of beings living on earth today.
By telling this story, Walking Tall aims to show the importance of the origin sciences in combatting discrimination and racism, and for promoting nature conservation.
This will be on Wednesday, 30 January from 17:30 to 18:30, also at the Dias Museum.
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