About Shaun Smillie
Journalist, with a love of bones, fossils and other things dug up. Fisherman and occasional beer maker.
She made it. She has survived the killing fields of India and if everything has gone well is most likely resting somewhere on the coast of Somalia. To those around the world she is known simply as 95778, an Amur … Continue reading →
Veteran photographer Alf Kumalo died today. He died in his sleep, aged 82. Alf was a warm, good man. This is a blog post I wrote a year ago about Alf and one of this great friends. The press always … Continue reading →
My great uncle Morris Christie once had a tooth ache. It was World War Two and Morris was a South African prisoner of war in Poland. He was working in a coal mine and he needed someone to look at … Continue reading →
It is not often that the dead I report on I know. But the 30-year-old police constable who lay dead beneath the medic’s space blanket, last night I knew. He was a communications officer and in the past I phoned … Continue reading →
Today is the start of a journey that might just end with us discovering just how destructive our ancestors really were. Palaeontologist Dr Adam Yates is heading off to Darwin in Australia to find something that once looked like a … Continue reading →
Posted in dinosaurs, human evolution, palaeontology, science
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Tagged Adam Yates, Australia, Bone, Darwin, Darwin Northern Territory, Diprotodon, Paleontology, science, Woolly mammoth
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So here they are, ten photographs taken as trophies of war. Some of them are 79 years old, if the dates on the back of those photographs are correct. Black and white pictures that through the World Wide Web and … Continue reading →
Writing those first drafts of history is a cliché lumped on us journalists. But this here is a real first draft of history. Nelson Mandela’s scrawl, notes jotted in an exercise book. A speech imperfect in its scratched out words, … Continue reading →
Their battle honours stretch back over a century, but on this night the Rand Light Infantry were on a different mission. Rioting had broken out in the informal settlement of Kya Sands to the north west of Johannesburg. Foreigners had … Continue reading →
This was a foolish act that cost the Italian officer everything he had. Everything dear to him, was taken off him, including those black and white photographs I now have. That act took place somewhere in the Western Desert probably … Continue reading →
This gallery contains 14 photos.
A week in Namibia with its miles of gravel roads that take you into the most desolate of landscapes and where you can find the tastiest apple pie in the world. Here are a couple of pictures.
