Phillip Vallentine Tobias (1925–2012) Palaeoanthropologist Who Pioneered Description of African Hominins

COMMENT OBITUARY Phillip Vallentine Tobias (1925–2012) Palaeoanthropologist who pioneered description of African hominins.

hillip Vallentine Tobias, known to his reclassified as Australopithecus boisei, then early variety of Homo, and Clarke argued that friends and colleagues as PVT, was the as Paranthropus boisei). others belonged to Paranthropus robustus. doyen of the palaeoanthropological Tobias’s collaboration with Louis and the The Sterkfontein fossils are crucial to debates Pcommunity. His descriptions of the early British anatomist John Napier to describe about whether hominins moved freely hominin fossils found at Olduvai Gorge, Tan- the Olduvai fossils became the basis for the between eastern and southern Africa, or zania, are part of the bedrock on which rests description of Homo habilis — a new, and at evolved independently in the two regions. our knowledge of human origins. In 1994, Clarke discovered four austra- For half a century, he stewarded the lopith foot bones in a box of fossils that had excavations at Sterkfontein, a group of been collected in 1977. He and Tobias pub- fossil-rich caves northwest of Johannes- lished an account of the bones, and Clarke burg, South Africa. He was a colleague has since recovered much of the skeleton, of Louis and Mary Leakey, the husband- nicknamed ‘Little Foot’. The collection is and-wife team who did much to establish on track to being the most complete early that humans originated in Africa. And he hominin skeleton ever recovered. AVUSA/GALLO IMAGES/GETTY AVUSA/GALLO remained in South Africa throughout his Tobias’s undergraduate contemporaries career — with all the professional compli- at Wits’ medical school included Sydney cations and opportunities for activism that Brenner and Aaron Klug. Whereas their entailed. All this gave him a distinctive research interests led them away from role at the University of the Witwatersrand South Africa, Tobias stayed put. He had to (‘Wits’) in Johannesburg, and in the field. remain where the fossils were. He became Tobias was born and received his early a consistent thorn in the side of the South education largely in Durban, South Africa. African apartheid regime. His vociferous In the first volume of his autobiography, opposition, in speeches and in demonstra- Into the Past (Picador Africa, 2005), he tions that were ruthlessly suppressed by the suggested that the premature death of his authorities, began in 1948 when he became sister Val from diabetes, as well as his visits president of the National Union of South to the Durban Natural Science Museum, African Students. He was no less ardent as were the reasons for his interest in science. a senior academic. Although his scientific A six-decade-long connection with prominence gave him a measure of protec- Wits began when he started his BSc in tion, his moral and physical courage was physiology, histology and embryol- not to be underestimated. It was distressing ogy, which he gained in 1946. While an that Tobias was occasionally tarred with undergraduate, Tobias met his mentor, the apartheid brush and denied access to Raymond Dart, who was famous for conferences in other countries. discovering Australopithecus africanus, the first contentious, hominin species. A mono Wedded to his work, Tobias never married. first early hominin to be unearthed in Africa. graph, The Cranium and Maxillary Denti- Apart from watching his beloved cricket at Tobias completed a medical degree in 1950, tion of Australopithecus (Zinjanthropus) the Bidvest Wanderers Stadium in Johannes- but opted for a career in research. boisei (Cambridge University Press, 1967), burg, he either worked or travelled. I visited After attaining a PhD in genetics in 1953, followed. Two mammoth volumes entitled him once at his home. Even though he owned Tobias took part in an expedition to study The Skulls, Endocasts and Teeth of Homo three large tables, we had to eat dinner from the San bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. habilis (Cambridge University Press, 1991) trays on our laps, because his ‘habilis volume’ This drew him into physical anthropology. provided exquisite details of subsequent was spread out on all the other surfaces. He spent 1955 at the University of Cam- hominin discoveries from Olduvai. As meticulous about his manners and dress bridge, UK, examining hominin fossils For much of his career, Tobias focused as he was about his writing and lectures, PVT curated in England and France. In 1956 he on excavations at the Sterkfontein caves. In was kind and encouraging to students and toured the United States, returning to South 1958 Sterkfontein became the property of young researchers, me included. South Africa Africa late that year. Through these travel- Wits, and Tobias ramped up the operations and the palaeoanthropological community ling fellowships he gained contacts that he there, which continue to this day. Initially, are immeasurably poorer for his passing. ■ nurtured for the rest of his career. the excavations were supervised by Alun In 1959, shortly after Dart retired, Tobias Hughes, who had worked with Dart. Since Bernard Wood is the University Professor was appointed as head of the anatomy 1991, they have been led by Ronald Clarke, of Human Origins at George Washington department at Wits, a position he held until who had assisted the Leakeys. University, Washington DC 20052, USA. he retired in 1990. That was also the year By the early 1990s, Tobias’s team had col- Tobias became his unofficial mentor after that he got his big scientific break. Louis lected more than 500 hominin fossils, mostly Wood visited Wits to study fossil craniums in and Mary Leakey invited him to analyse of A. africanus. However, some (includ- 1972. His research builds on Tobias’s seminal the Zinjanthropus boisei cranium that Mary ing the jaw in his left hand, pictured) were work on the Olduvai hominin fossil record. had just discovered at Olduvai Gorge (since judged by Tobias and Hughes to belong to an e-mail: [email protected]