STERKFONTEIN APE-MAN PLESIANTHROPUS (1950) - Signed by BROOM & ROBINSON & former copy of ROBERT ALLEN DYER

Publisher's navy-blue hardcover binding with gilt embossed titles on front panel and spine.

Excellent condition with sound binding and sharp corners. Contents clean.

117pp. Illustrated.

This copy is signed by both Broom and Robinson on the front endpaper. It is additionally signed on the top right-hand corner by Robert Allen Dyer (1900-1987), the former owner, who was a famous South African botanist and taxonomist. He was the author of numerous books on South African plant species with many being named after him, including the magnificent Encephalartos Dyerianus, or Dyer's cycad.

Book is divided in two parts, namely:

1.) FURTHER EVIDENCE OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE STERKFONTEIN APE-MAN PLESIANTHROPUS - by Robert Broom & J. T. Robinson.

2.) THE BRAIN CASTS OF THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED PLESIANTHROPUS SKULLS - by G.W.H. Scheepers.

Robert Broom and J. T. Robinson made a series of spectacular finds in and around the Sterkfontein caves. This region north-west of Johannesburg is known today as The Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site because of its importance as a site for the study of early hominid fossils. Their finds in the cave included fragments from six homonins which they called Pleisianthropus Transvaalensis, popularly known as Mrs. Ples.

At Swartkrans in 1948 Broom made his most famous discovery, that of a fossilized homonin skull with a robust appearance. It had a bulging and continuous brow, a broad flat face and deep jaw with large chewing teeth. This early homonin was estimated to be about 1.8 million years old. He named the genus Paranthopus robustus.

Before his discoveries that would make him world-famous he worked as a professor of geology and palaeontology at the University of Stellenbosch, but was later forced out of this position for promoting the belief in evolution.