320 AKNTJAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1965 



tor, and was the first intimation that any fossil primate had been found 

 in Africa south of Egypt. So we became very excited, and after inter- 

 viewing the professor of geology, Dr. R. B. Young, learned to our satis- 

 faction that he was going to Thoming nearby the following week. 



Arrived at Buxton, Professor Young learned that in the previous 

 week a miner, M. de Bruyn, had brought in a number of fossil-laden 

 rocks blasted out the previous week. When they came to Johannes- 

 burg, I found the virtually complete cast of the interior of a skull 

 among them. This brain cast was as big as that of a large gorilla ; and 

 fortunately it fitted at tlie front end onto another rock, from which in 

 due course there emerged the complete facial skeleton of an infant 

 only about 5 or 6 years old, which looked amazingly human. It was 

 the first time that anyone had been privileged to see the complete face 

 and to reconstruct accurately the entire head of one of man's extinct 

 apelike relatives (see plates 2 and 3) . The brain was so large and the 

 face was so human that I was confident that here indeed was one of 

 our early progenitors that had lived on the African Continent ; and as 

 it had chosen the southern part of Africa for its homeland I called it 

 Australopithecus africanus^ i. e., the South African ape. 



Today, largely tlirough the labors of the late Dr. Robert Broom and 

 J. T. Robinson, the remains of about a hundred difi'erent infantile, 

 adolescent, adult, middle-aged, and senescent specimens of these aus- 

 tralopithecine progenitors of mankind are known from Taungs, 80 

 miles north of Kimberley ; from three different sites in the Sterkf on- 

 tein Valley, about 30 miles from Johannesburg ; and from Makapans- 

 gat, somewhat less than 200 miles to the north in the central Transvaal. 

 In some respects australopithecine anatomy is better known than that 

 of living apes or even the living races of mankind. After the passing 

 of a generation of scepticism and of repeated discoveries and debates, 

 the Australopithecinae are generally accepted today for what they 

 were originally claimed to be — a group or family of advancing crea- 

 tures midway between ape and mankind. Their brains were about the 

 size of, and in some cases even a little larger than, those of the largest 

 of large gorillas, but their posture and body carriage were not apelike; 

 they were erect like living human races, such as the African Pygmies 

 and Bushmen. The South African man-apes varied in stature and 

 body size from types as small as, or even smaller than, the little Pyg- 

 mies of central x\frica, to types as massively constructed as the big- 

 gest and bulkiest Negroes. There is good reason for believing that 

 some fossilized pieces of teeth and jaws, found as far north as Kenya 

 and as far east as Java, and generally called Meganthropus^ are also 

 the remains of genuine Australopithecinae ! Unfortunately we do not 

 know what the brains, stature, and posture of these wide-ranging 

 Meganthropus members of the Australopithecus group were like; but 



