Palaeoecology of Africa(PoA) of which this is the 35th volume, is a series traditionally focusingon multi-disciplinary studies on palaeoenvironments of Africa, especially on more recent parts ofgeological time like the Neogene and Quaternary. The early PoA volumes reveal the developmenthistory of these palaeoscience aspects in Africa. Thanks to the pioneering and visionary effortsof Eduard Meine van Zinderen Bakker and the publisher A. A. Balkema, the early volumes ofPoA was a unique academic initiative out of Africa in the nineteen sixties. The series servedas a mouth piece for an international group of specialists at a time when the important rolepalaeoenvironmental changes did not yet receive as much attention as today. Palaeoscience wasthen, a little-known discipline for the continent except for a rich heritage of Palaoeozoic fossilsand a few important hominid cranial finds such as at such as Taung, Florisbad and a few othersites (e.g. Dart 1925; Dryer 1935). PoA had its humble origins in the late nineteen-fifties and early sixties when van ZinderenBakker, a Dutch naturalist who immigrated to South Africa in 1947 (Meadows 2015; Neumannand Scott 2018) started lecturing at the University of the Orange Free State in Bloemfontein(now shortened to University of the Free State). Here, he formed the Palynological ResearchUnit that was sponsored by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, andby the 1950’s he was already involved in some of the first palynogical research projects in Africa,including modern pollen surveys in Southern Africa (Coetzee and van Zinderen Bakker 1952)and analysis of the hominin-bearing spring deposits of Florisbad near Bloemfontein (Dreyer1935; van Zinderen Bakker 1957).PoA started as eight soft-cover reports on pollen analysis entitled ‘Palynology of Africa’ inwhich van Zinderen Bakker reported on research news and activities in palynology and relatedaspects of palaeosciences in Africa covering the period of 1950–1963 (referenced in Neumannand Scott 2018). They were later re-published by Balkema, Cape Town in 1966 in book formas Volume 1 ofPalaeoecology of Africawith the sub-titleand the Surrounding Islands & Antarctica(Van Zinderen Bakker 1966). The sub-title reflected van Zinderen Bakker’s widemulti-disciplinary interests, which included biological and palynological research at the Marionand Prince Edward Islands,c.2000 km south east of Cape Town in the Southern Ocean, towhich he organized the first biological and geological research expedition in 1965 (van ZinderenBakker 1976a; Van Zinderen Bakkeret al.1971). PoA Volume 1 (Van Zinderen Bakker 1966)included accounts of activities of several well-known international scientist at the time like D.A.Livingstone, L.S.B. Leakey, J.D. Clarke, R.J. Mason, C.K. Brain, W.W. Bishop, A.R.H. Martin,M. van Campo, E.P. Plumstead, H. Rakotoarivelo, H. Straka, O. Hedberg, R.E. Moreau, W.F.Libby, and others.