| RefNo | EC/1996/39 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Tobias, Phillip Vallentine: certificate of election to the Royal Society |
| Date | 1995 |
| Description | Citation typed |
| Citation | Phillip Tobias is a distinguished paleo-anthropologist and anatomist who has made valuable (900) contributions on human biology, ancestry and hominid fossils from South, East and Noth Africa, and from Asia. He has been awarded ten Hon. D.Sc's and many international prizes and citations for his research. Early work was on the human biology of the Kalahari bushmen, but from student days he began to explore caves and hunted for fossils at Sterkfonein, Makapansgat and elsewhere, contributing to Raymond Dart's finding of 'Australopithecus africanus'. Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania yielded a hyper-robust early hominid species, 'Australopithecus bosei', Tobias's 1967 book on the species is masterly and definitive. Equally, and possibly more important for studies on the emergence of Man was the discovery from Olduvai of 'Homo habilis' (handy man), associated with stone implements and which showed appreciable brain expansion. His accounts of how human evolution progressed in Africa have been restrained and critical, recently he was elected a Founder member of the newly formed Academyof Science of South Africa. |
| AccessStatus | Closed |
Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| NA2648 | Tobias; Phillip Vallentine (1925 - 2012) | 1925 - 2012 |