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Person PER-000019

Roy Don Oosthuizen

9 December 1923 – 20 September 1999 · Oosthuizen line

Descends from the root couple, 4 generations up

  1. Roy Don Oosthuizen
  2. Frederick Simon Oosthuizen
  3. Frederik Simon Oosthuizen
  4. Jacobus Daniel Johannes Oosthuizen
  5. Ockert Almero Oosthuizen

Connection to the Koup

Lived on Rondabel in this district (1999).

Names

Baptismal name
Roy Don
Given
Roy Don
Surname
Oosthuizen

The formal baptismal name and the name a person was actually called are both kept, and neither is derived from the other. Spelling drift between records is evidence, not noise.

Immediate family

Father
Frederick Simon Oosthuizen
Mother
Cornelia Magrieta de Beer
Brothers and sisters
Married
Lucy Herbert de Wit

A life in the record

  1. 9 December 1923 born Born
  2. 1986 event Roy Oosthuizen's fossil (Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni) later named for him
    found on Zwartskraal in the 1980s
  3. the 1980s event Roy Oosthuizen picks up the nodule on Zwartkraal
    A slightly flattened, egg-shaped nodule weathered out of mudstone. He asked his son to hold it while he struck it with a hammer; it broke into three and showed what he took for a fossilised shark skull. He described it, boxed it and sent it to the South African Museum. DATE DELIBERATELY IMPRECISE: t
  4. 20 September 1999 event Roy Oosthuizen dies
    Thirteen years after the shark was named for him and fourteen before anyone worked out what it actually was. He had bequeathed the collection to the South African Museum.
  5. 20 September 1999 died Died
  6. 4 January 2017 event Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni is published in Nature
    Michael Coates of the University of Chicago and colleagues: the brain, cranial nerves, nostrils and inner ear are those of a chimaera, not a shark. It fixed where chimaeras branch off the jawed-vertebrate tree - one of the four fundamental divisions of modern vertebrate life. A farmer on a Karoo she
  7. undated land Lived on it, Rondabel

Ground they are on record on

Stories

Sources

  1. Rose Willis & Doreen Atkinson, "Zeekoegat: Explorations in the Koup Karoo" (2022) Karoo Development Foundation38pp cameo
  2. Coates et al., "A symmoriiform chondrichthyan braincase and the origin of chimaeroid fishes", Nature, 4 January 2017Naturedoi:10.1038/nature20806

Research notes

palaeontologist; Zwartskraal; Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni

[1 Aug 2026, SRC-068 Zeekoegat cameo] THREE species carry his name, not one. Besides Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni: BRACHYSCHISMA OOSTHUIZENI, a blastoid, an ancient stalked, starfish-shaped sea creature, which HE considered his most important discovery, and RHIPIDOTHYRIS OOSTHUIZENII, a brachiopod from shallow warm water in the Ceres area. His museum on Zwartskraal held over 3,000 fossils and was reckoned the best privately owned exhibit of its kind in the country; a BBC crew filmed it. Prof John Almond visited over a shared interest in invertebrates, and Roy said of it: "It's like a dream come true. In the 30 years that I have been studying these fossils, I have never found anyone who shared my interest." Dr Herbert Klinger of Iziko, brought out to Vrisgewaagd by Judy Maguire, noted his good specimens of Placocystella capensis, the tadpole with horns. He left the collection to the SA Museum; Dr Roger Smith's tribute singles out ancient lichen and "the only eurypterid ever found", a giant sea scorpion. Part of it is on permanent display at the Fransie Pienaar Museum in Prince Albert, dedicated to his memory. [TO VERIFY] the cameo also credits him with "the oldest fossil in the southern hemisphere, a mammal-type reptile", an extraordinary claim with no citation, recorded but not asserted. It also spells the shark oosthuizenAE; the published name is oosthuizenI.

These are working notes, not finished prose: they carry the reasoning, the corrections and the things still marked to verify. They are kept here so the page itself can read as what is known.

Elders

FamilySearch profile GHFD-VK5