platanna

[…] leading medical pathologist, Dr Louis P. Bosman, became so concerned at the depletion of the local platanna population that he petitioned the Provincial Administration to introduce protective legislation and to investigate the possibility of the artificial culture of these animals at the Jonkershoek Hatchery. […] For many years scientists observed that there was only one species of platanna, Xenopus laevis. Dr Walter Rose, who devoted many years of study to the amphibians of the Western Cape, had questioned this, and had eventually became convinced that there was another species, similar in appearance, but smaller, shyer and less aggressive. This he named X. gilli after Dr L. Gill, director of the South African Museum.