[1] His work in the southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, led to the establishment of one of the world's finest fossil collections, housed at the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research (BPI) in Johannesburg.

These projects entailed spending time in the Netherlands, Belgium and France to study Palaeolithic mammalian faunas; he was also involved in the analysis of fossils from Pinhole Cave in England.

At the time of his retirement at the age of 68 in 1990, Professor James Kitching was Reader in Karoo Biostratigraphy and also Director of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research.

[4] When the University of the Witwatersrand set up the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, he was appointed as the first member of staff on 26 October 1945 and mandated to collect fossils from the Karoo.

[5][6] Invited to join the Ohio State University Institute of Polar Studies 1970-71 geological party to the Queen Maud Mountains as part of the US Antarctic Research Programme, he, together with James (Jim) Collinson, was the first person to identify and collect therapsid (proto-mammal) fossils there, of Lystrosaurus Zone age, confirming the former continental link between southern Africa and Antarctica.

[7] In 1977 James Kitching recovered seven Massospondylus eggs that had been exposed by roadmaking operations in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa.