Tielman Johannes Roos Scholtz was the son of Jacobus Eduard Hauman Scholtz and his wife Elizabeth Margaretha, born Marais. He was educated at the Boys' High School and at Victoria College, Stellenbosch. At the latter institution (which developed into the University of Stellenbosch) he was a student of Dr Robert Broom*. In 1907 he presented some mammal-like reptile fossils (Class Synapsida) from rocks of the Beaufort Group at Victoria West to Broom, who was also in charge of the fossil collection of the South African Museum, Cape Town. Broom regarded one of these, which he named Galechirus Scholtzi after the collector, as the most important addition to the museum's vertebrate fossil collection that year, as "this little animal for the first time throws a clear light on the origin of the Therocephalian reptiles". He described the specimen in the Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society that same year. Another of the interesting discoveries donated by Scholtz was the skeleton of a small aquatic reptile somewhat resembling Mesosaurus, which Broom named Heleosaurus scholtzi. The taxonomic position of both these fossils has remained uncertain.
Scholtz continued his studies in the Netherlands where he qualified as a medical practitioner in 1913. The next year he obtained the Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery of the Society of Apothecaries (LMSSA, London). Returning to South Africa in 1915, after the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918), he obtained a commission in the South African Medical Corps and took part in the South West Africa Campaign. After the war he practiced in Pretoria and worked as a surgeon at both the Pretoria Hospital and the Volkshospitaal. From 1927 he served as a member of the Federal Council of the South African Medical Association. In 1929 he was reappointed as a member of the Transvaal Asylum Board for a further period of three years. He died unexpectedly of septicemia a few years later.
