In 1860, the 14-year-old Prince Alfred (later Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh) made a visit to South Africa while serving as a naval cadet aboard HMS Euryalus. The visit coincided with a programme of military road building by the Royal Corps of Engineers which had uncovered a number of fossils. Alfred was tasked by his father, Prince Albert, Prince Consort, to acquire some to be sent back to London for further study. When he returned to Britain, the remains were studied by Richard Owen who identified them as coming from two genera of the middle Permian-late Triassic therapsid clade Dicynodont, an ancestor of modern mammals.
This copy of the article issued in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (vol. 11, no. 11, 1862) was presented by Owen to the Royal Library.