Heritage Cases

This temporary export permit was submitted for the non-destructive synchrotron scanning of one hominin craniodental specimen from Kromdraai (KW 7000) for high resolution analysis of its internal anatomy at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland. Unfortunately, we could not scan the KW 7000 specimen because there was a major failure of the TOMCAT beamline (Swiss Light Source) in the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI in Switzerland) during the period of the loan. Indeed, on the 23rd of June 2017, in order to fulfill the conditions of our permit, the specimen KW 7000 was returned to the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand. Since then, we waited to write to you with this report because we had no information about a new possible date to scan the specimen at the PSI synchrotron after the repair of TOMCAT beamline. We have recently been informed that the TOMCAT beamline is now functioning again and that we have the rare opportunity to scan the KW 7000 specimen between February and May 2018. Therefore, we would like to inquire whether we may apply for an extension of our temporary export permit to May 2018 in order to scan the KW 7000 specimen. May we emphasize that KW 7000 is an extremely important hominin specimen that we have discovered recently, and which we want to scan in the PSI (near Zurich, Switzerland) where there is a scanning facility that will contribute significantly to an understanding of the Kromdraai hominins. There is no synchrotron in South Africa at the present time. We would be grateful if we could obtain a new temporary export permit extended to May 31, 2018, for the non-destructive scanning of the KW 7000 specimen. The specimen would be carried personally by Dr José Braga to and from the PSI, near Zurich (Switzerland).