A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARINE MALACOLOGY IN SOUTH AFRICA

SUMMARY

The history of South African marine malacology began in 1688, when several Cape molluscs were illustrated by Martin Lister. Knowledge of the Cape molluscan fauna developed slowly during the early binomial period, for reasons here discussed. The first major step in inventorying the molluscan fauna was the publication of Krauss's Die südafrikanischen Mollusken in 1848. based on his own fieldwork. It was not until the last decade of the 19th century that there was a major surge in local interest, when amateur shell collectors began to send collections (mainly from the eastern Cape and Natal) to overseas malacologists. Of these amateurs, W.H. Turton was responsible for the discovery of nearly half of the eastern Cape species now known, although his own published work continues to generate problems. The molluscs of the continental shelf and slope were first scientifically sampled by the Deutsche Tiefsee-Expedition (1898–1899) and by the Cape and Natal governments using the Pieter Faure (1897–1901). The latter material was studied first by overseas workers, and later by K.H. Barnard, who published the first overview of South African molluscs in a series of papers between 1958 and 1969. During the last two decades an extensive programme of sampling shelf and slope molluscs was carried out by the Natal Museum, which has produced a vast reservoir of samples that will be studied malacologists at this museum and elsewhere for many decades to come.