Fossil Anthropoids in South Africa

Abstract

FURTHER discoveries of the fossilized remains of anthropoids in South Africa, which were announced on behalf of Dr. Robert Broom of the Transvaal Museum during the meeting at Cambridge of the British Association (see p. 377 of this issue of NATURE), constitute an addition of the first importance to the evidence relating to the early history of man and his precursors which has been accumulating in South Africa since the discovery of Rhodesian man in 1921 and the later discovery in 1925 by Prof. Raymond Dart of the Taungs skull, Australopithecus africanus. The doubts which had been expressed whether the latter might not be a young chimpanzee or gorilla, and not, as Prof. Dart maintained, more closely related to the human stem than any fossil anthropoid then known, may be regarded as having been finally resolved by Dr. Broom's discovery of the Sterkfontein skull two years ago, to which he gave the name of Australopithecus transvaalensis,