OLDUVAI GORGE (Vols. I & II) - vol. ii SIGNED & DATED by Phillip Tobias

VOLUME I: Olduvai Gorge 1951-1961: A Preliminary Report on the Geology and Fauna

xiv + 118pp. Includes three maps and 97 full-page plates of prehistoric animal remains (between pages 112 & 113).

Publisher's green cloth binding. Contents clean. Binding tight. Dust jacket in very good condition.

VOLUME II: Olduvai Gorge: The Cranium and Maxillary Dentition of Australopithecus (Zinjanthropus) Boisei 

xvi + 264pp. Includes many text figures and tables and 42 full-page plates of prehistoric human remains (between pages 252 & 253). SIGNED & DATED author Phillip V. Tobias on the title page.

Publisher's green cloth binding. Contents clean. Binding tight. Dust jacket is price clipped but otherwise in very good condition.

'On 15 August 1959 Dr L. S. B. Leakey announced the discovery, in the lowest level of Olduvai Gorge, of a new and beautifully preserved fossil cranium of a homonid, which he tentatively named Zinjanthropus boisei. For the second volume of the report on the excavations at Olduvai, Professor Phillip V. Tobias has undertaken the definitive analysis of the cranium. This is the most comprehensive study ever made on a hominid skull belonging to the early and mid-Pleistocene group of ape-men, half-men or near-men, known as the australopithecines. 

The Zinjanthropus boisei skull is of immense age: according to determinations by the potassium-argon dating technique it is about 1,750,000 years old. It was found on a 'living floor' in association with broken animal bones and primitive artefacts of the Oldowan culture. At first it was assumed that the artefacts were made by Zinjanthropus himself, but the subsequent discovery near by of the more evolved Homo habilis has led to the suggestion that Zinjanthropus was not the hunter, but the hunted.'