 Kitching was the first member of staff to be appointed to the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, set up at the University of Witwatersrand in 1945.In 1970,he was the first person to collect and identify a specimen of a Karoo therapsid in Antarctica and so demonstrate that Antarctica and southern Africa were once connected.Today, Kitching's work is stored at the Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre which depicts the setting in the area around Nieu Bethesda 253 million years ago during the Permian Period.