New Fossil Anthropoid Skull from South Africa

Abstract

A DISCOVERY is announced from South Africa which, if first impressions are confirmed by more detailed examination, may go far towards clearing up a point which has been a matter of acute anthropological controversy for more than a decade. Dr. Robert Broom, of the Transvaal Museum, and his colleagues, it is reported in a dispatch from the Johannesburg correspondent of The Times in the issue of August 26, have discovered in the Sterk-fontein caves near Krugersdorp, a natural cast in limestone of the brain of an advanced type of ape and a number of fossilized bones of the skull, including jaws and teeth. It is anticipated that this new evidence will prove of importance in its bearing upon the status of the phylogeny of man and the great apes, and more especially on the position of the Taungs skull. It will be remembered that, when that fossil was found in 1924, some doubt was expressed as to how far the approximation to the human type in its characters stressed by Prof. Raymond Dart, by whom it was discovered, was due to its immaturity. The young of the chimpanzee, it was pointed out, is well known to exhibit pseudo-human characters, which disappear as maturity approaches; and it was agreed that the Taungs skull was that of an individual of not more than six years of age. As the Sterkfontein specimen, it would appear, is adult, a comparison with the Taungs skull may determine these uncertainties, and at the same time afford an indication of the relation of these fossil types to existing anthropoids as well as to early forms of man.