Michael Herbert Day

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Michael Herbert Day (born March 8, 1927 in North Kensington , London , † June 1, 2018 ) was a British anatomist and anthropologist . His specialty was the evolution of two-legged locomotion in the course of human tribal history . From 1972 to 1989 he held the chair of anatomy at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School in London.

education

After attending the Sevenoaks School in Kent , he was committed to military service in the Royal Air Force from 1945 to 1948 , which he performed in the Middle East as a mechanic servicing the engines of Lancaster bombers . He then attended the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine (RFHSM) in London , from which he graduated in 1954 with the medical exam. He then continued his medical training in the anatomy department of the Royal Free Hospital with the aim of becoming a specialist in orthopedics and an orthopedic expert . In 1958 he decided to do a doctoral thesis at the suggestion of John Russell Napier ; Napier - as an expert in the anatomy of the hand and foot - had set up a "Unit of Primatology" in the Department of Anatomy since 1952, because he was of the opinion that the human musculoskeletal system could not be understood without knowledge of the closely related primates . At the University of London , Day received a doctorate ( Ph.D. ) in 1962 with a study of the lumbosacral plexus , which contributes remarkably uniformly to the innervation of the lower extremities of mammals .

Between 1960 and 1964, Day and Napier published several specialist articles, among other things on damage to the innervation of the hand and the short muscles of the thumb. Michael Day then devoted his research and publications exclusively to human evolution .

In 1962 Day moved from the RFHSM to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School (MHMS), where he was appointed reader in anthropology in 1969 . In 1972 he was awarded the chair of anthropology at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School (STHMS; today: King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of London), which he held until his retirement in 1989. After retiring, he worked in the paleontology department of the Natural History Museum in London for almost 25 years .

From 1976 to 1979 he was President of the Primate Society of Great Britain , and from 1979 to 1983 President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland .

research

Since the early 1950s, the British-born Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey had collaborated with Wilfrid Le Gros Clark , professor at the University of Oxford and also a paleoanthropologist, primatologist and anatomist, in the analysis and description of limb bones, which Mary Leakey started in 1948 the island of Rusinga in Lake Victoria and which were assigned to the genus Proconsul . After the two Leakeys had also recovered fossil, presumably hominine bones from the area below the skull in the Olduvai Gorge , they asked Le Gros Clark who he could recommend to support them in the evaluation of these finds. Le Gros Clark recommended Napier, whom he had already included in the processing of the Proconsul finds, and he in turn recruited Michael Day. Between 1964 and 1966, the two of them published three studies on the leg bones that were discovered. a. it was proven that the fossil Olduvai Hominid 8 (OH 8) showed features of upright gait. This classification by Day and Napier contributed significantly to the fact that Louis Leakey, together with Phillip Tobias and John Napier, published the first description of the new species Homo habilis in 1964 , to which OH 8 was assigned as a paratype .

In the following years, Day was repeatedly included in the analysis of the fossils discovered by the Leakey team. In addition, the fossil footprints discovered in Laetoli in 1978 were scientifically processed by Day. At the same time, Day wrote the first scientific description of the skull bones Omo 1 and Omo 2 , which had been discovered by a research group led by Richard Leakey and are considered to be early evidence of the existence of the archaic Homo sapiens in Ethiopia .

The books he wrote, in particular Guide to Fossil Man, provided an overview of significant hominine fossil finds and deposits of hominine fossils over decades and over several updated new editions.

Fonts (selection)

Books
  • Guide to Fossil Man. Cassell, London 1965.
  • Fossil Man. The Hamlyn Publishing Group, London 1969.
    • dt .: The man of prehistory. Delphin-Verlag 1970
  • The Fossil History of Man. Carolina Biological Supply Company, Burlington 1972.
  • as editor: Human Evolution. Taylor and Francis Ltd., London 1973.
Articles in trade journals
  • MH Day and John Russell Napier : Fossil Foot Bones. In: Current Anthropology . Volume 6, No. 4, 1965, pp. 391-411, doi: 10.1086 / 200626 .
  • MH Day and John Russell Napier: A hominid toe bone from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. In: Nature . Volume 211, No. 5052, 1966, pp. 929-930, doi: 10.1038 / 211929a0
  • MH Day and Bernard Wood : Functional Affinities of the Olduvai Hominid 8 Talus. In: Man. New Series, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1968, pp. 440-455, doi: 10.2307 / 2798879 .
  • MH Day: Femoral fragment of a robust australopithecine from the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. In: Nature. Volume 221, No. 5177, 1969, pp. 230-233, doi: 10.1038 / 221230a0 .
  • MH Day: Post-cranial remains of Homo erectus from Bed IV, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. In: Nature. Volume 232, No. 5310, 1971, pp. 383-387, doi: 10.1038 / 232383a0 .
  • MH Day and Theya I. Molleson: The Trinil femora. In: MH Day (Ed.): Human Evolution. Symposia of the Society for the Study of Human Biology. Taylor & Francis, London 1973, pp. 127-154.
  • MH Day, Meave Leakey and Cassian C. Magori: A new hominid fossil skull (LH18) from the Ngaloba Beds, Laetoli, Northern Tanzania. In: Nature. Volume 201, No. 5751, 1980, pp. 55-56, doi: 0.1038 / 284055a0 .
  • MH Day and Chris Stringer : A reconsideration of the Omo Kibish remains and the erectus-sapiens transition. In: Henry de Lumley (Ed.): 1st Congrès International de Paléontologie Humain (Prétirage). Nice 1982, pp. 814-846

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernard Wood : Michael Herbert Day (1927-2018). In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 167, No. 4, 2018, pp. 697-700, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.23693
  2. ^ MH Day: The anatomy of the lumbosacral plexus with particular reference to the blood supply. Dissertation. London University, London 1962
  3. ↑ MH Day: A case of bilateral median nerve compression with denervation of muscles in the hands. In: Royal Free Hospital Journal. Volume 23, 1960, pp. 10-13.
  4. ^ MH Day and John Russell Napier: The two heads of flexor pollicis brevis. In: Journal of Anatomy . Volume 95, 1961, pp. 123-130.
  5. ^ Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark , Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey : The Miocene Hominoidea of ​​East Africa. Volume 1 of the Fossil Mammals of Africa series. British Museum of Natural History, 1951, pp. 1–117.
  6. ^ MH Day and John Russell Napier: Hominid fossils from Bed 1, Olduvai Gorge, Tanganyika: Fossil Foot Bones. In: Nature . Volume 201, No. 4923, 1964, pp. 969-970, doi: 10.1038 / 201969a0 .
  7. ↑ Louis Leakey, Phillip Tobias and John Russell Napier: A new species of the genus Homo from Olduvai Gorge. In: Nature. 202, 1964, pp. 7-9; doi: 10.1038 / 202007a0 , full text (PDF; 352 kB)
  8. ^ MH Day and Ernie H. Wickens: Laetoli Pliocene hominid footprints and bipedalism. In: Nature. Volume 286, No. 5771, 1980, pp. 385-387, doi: 10.1038 / 286385a0 .
  9. ↑ MH Day: Early Homo sapiens Remains from the Omo River Region of South-west Ethiopia: Omo Human Skeletal Remains. In: Nature. Volume 222, No. 5199, 1969, pp. 1135-1138, doi: 10.1038 / 2221135a0
  10. ^ MH Day and Chris Stringer : The Omo Kibish cranial remains and classification within the genus Homo. In: L'Anthropologie. Vol. 95, No. 2-3, 1991, pp. 573-594, abstract .
personal data
SURNAME Day, Michael Herbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Day, MH; Day, Michael H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British anatomist and anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH North Kensington , London
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 2018