James Kitching Fossil Exploration centre in Nieu Bethesda is at the centre of an extinction event 251 million years ago

ROUNDING a bend on the windy dirt road, we see the little village ahead of us - wide streets lined with water furrows, immaculate little white houses set against a Karoo-blue sky, the church spire sticking up above the trees. Nieu Bethesda feels like the town that time left behind.

It's an appropriate feeling since we're here to travel back in time. Way back in time, in fact, to a dramatic and calamitous event - rather difficult to imagine here, given the calm of the place. We're going back a quarter of a billion years - before the dinosaurs roamed here.

It's 36°C now, and we're squinting under the sun in a dusty street, feeling slightly disappointed. We're outside a small whitewashed building that looks like a plain, two-room house and only the large inflatable T-Rex provides a clue to the excitement we're seeking. We're at the James Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre. We step inside - and are pleasantly surprised.

For one thing, it's nice and cool. Secondly, we're standing in one of the most interesting and beautiful visitors centres we've seen. It narrates a story of the Karoo from about 255-million years ago until 190-million years ago, taking in the dramatic event we've come to unearth. Like many of the stops on our tour, it just takes a little while for the magic to start to work.

The spot we're standing in, and indeed the whole Karoo, was once a huge body of water, fed by rivers from surrounding mountains higher than today's Himalayas. This was when all the continents were still joined. It's strange to think of the Karoo as the green and flourishing heart of the super continent, but the evidence is in the rocks and we're about to go hunting for it.

We are welcomed to the centre by the excellent tour guides. At a workbench on the stoep they show us how the fossils are painstakingly removed from the stone with a dentist's drill. After a few tips, we are led out to the mudstone of the Gats River to start searching for fossils, much to the excitement of a group of school children, who have joined us on our tour.

James Kitching (after whom the centre is named) was apparently six when he found his first fossil here - and he discovered a new species at age seven.

He later discovered plenty of dinosaur fossils too, including the famed Massospondylus eggs at Golden Gate in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains.

It is evident from the fossil finds throughout the Karoo that a great diversity of plant and animal life evolved here. Their remains are preserved in river and marsh deposits, giving us snapshots of the evolutionary processes at work as we look at layer upon successive layer. The lush landscape and weird creatures are difficult to imagine: the massive Gorgonopsian (a sabre-toothed reptile) and small, plant-eating pig-like Diictodon. This was all about to change. 251.4-million years ago, that life (along with the rest of life on the planet) came precipitously close to being exterminated. Approximately 95% of marine species and 70% of land families disappeared. Animals like the Gorgonopsian and Diictodon and plants like the Glossopteris (which fossilised to form most of the coal reserves of South Africa) disappeared. One of the creatures that made it through was the therapsid, a "mammal-like" reptile. These were the ancestors of both dinosaurs and mammals, and hence us.

The Karoo is one of the best places in the world to learn about the time before and after this massive extinction, which heralded the end of the Permian age and the beginning of the Triassic (hence Permo-Triassic extinction). South African scientists are world leaders in this field.

The centre aims to draw tourists' attention to this significant site and was established by Professor Bruce Rubidge and Dr Ian McKay of the Bernard Price Institute at Wits University.

We had previously caught up with Dr Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan from the University of Cape Town, who analyses the chemical composition of Karoo fossils to learn more about the creatures. She is passionate about raising the profile of the African dinosaurs, of which there are many, but which are largely unknown to South Africans, who've had far more exposure to the European and American varieties like T-Rex and Stegosaurus.

Later in the afternoon we visit a nearby farm, called Ganora. Less than 10km from town, it bears testimony to the richness of the Karoo's pre-history with fantastic displays of fossils, stone-age tools and Bushman artifacts - all found on the farm. You can also stay here and do guided walks to find your own fossils, learn about the medicinal plants of the region and look at the Bushman rock art in the surrounding stone shelters.

For more information on the region, visit www.nieubethesda.info.

Nonhlanhla Vilakazi is a PhD paleo-herpetologist at Wits University. Robert Inglis is a director of Jive Media, independent science communication agency. The tour of palaeontological sites was sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology through SAASTA ( www.saasta.ac.za ).

Read more about the African Origins Tour on Nonhlanhla's blog: www.africanorigins.co.za.