Robert Broom

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Robert Broom

Robert Broom (born November 30, 1866 in Paisley , Scotland , † April 6, 1951 ) was a South African doctor and palaeontologist of Scottish origin, who was best known for the discovery and research of prehistoric finds.

Life

Broom approved in 1895 and his doctorate in 1905 as a physician at the University of Glasgow . His specialty was obstetrics .

In 1893 he married Mary Baird Baillie.

On long journeys he continued his self- taught education , where he was particularly fascinated by the question of the origin of mammals . This took him to Australia in 1892 and five years later to the South African Republic , where he would stay for the rest of his life.

From 1903 onwards he was professor of zoology and geology at Victoria College in Stellenbosch . In 1910, however, he lost his job at the extremely conservative and religious institute because he persistently committed to the theory of evolution . He went to the remote semi-desert Karoo , where he practiced as a doctor.

There he continued to study paleontology and gained a worldwide reputation for his studies of mammal-like reptiles (Therapsida). He became head of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at the South African Museum in Cape Town and was admitted to the Royal Society in 1920 , from which he received the Royal Medal in 1928 “for his discoveries which shed new light on the problem of the origin of mammals “Received.

After Raymond Dart's discovery of the " Child of Taung " - the skull of an Australopithecine child - his interest in paleoanthropology grew .

For a while, however, Broom's career as a recognized scientist seemed to be over and he was threatened with impoverishment when Dart described the situation in a letter to Jan Smuts . Smuts put pressure on the South African government and in 1934 he succeeded in getting Broom to work as an assistant in paleontology at the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria .

In the following years he made a number of spectacular fossil finds , including the remains of six hominids in Sterkfontein , which he described as Plesianthropus transvaalensis and which were later assigned to Australopithecus africanus . In 1936 he discovered the first skull of an adult Australopithecus , the Fossil TM 1511. Another skull came to be known as " Mrs. Ples ". These findings supported Dart's assumption that the "Child of Taung" was an early hominid.

More finds followed. From 1937, Broom began digging in Kromdraai after a student found fossil teeth there. There he made his most important discovery in 1938: the Paranthropus robustus (originally Australopithecus robustus ).

In 1946, Broom published a comprehensive monograph on the Australopithecines . This and the studies of the influential British scientist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark , which were published in the journal Nature , gave the theories about the early hominids international recognition. In 1946, Broom received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences . In 1947 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

In 1948 he started excavations in Swartkrans , where the first remains of the hominid, later known as Homo ergaster , and other fossils of Australopithecines were found. He worked on publications until the end of his life, determined to “wear out rather than rust”. Shortly before his death in 1951, he completed another monograph on the australopithecines and said to his nephew: "This is now complete ... as well as myself."

Initial descriptions (selection)

Fonts (selection)

Nearly a hundred scientific publications have been published by Broom, some of which are:

  • Fossil Reptiles of South Africa. In: Science in South Africa. (1905)
  • Reptiles of Karroo Formation. In: Geology of Cape Colony (1909)
  • The fossil fishes of the Upper Karoo Beds of South Africa. In: Annals of the South African Museum. Volume 7, 1909, pp. 251-269
  • Development and Morphology of the Marsupial Shoulder Girdle. In: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. (1899)
  • Comparison of Permian Reptiles of North America with Those of South Africa. In: Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. (1910)
  • Structure of Skull in Cynodont Reptiles. In: Proceedings of the Zoological Society. (1911)
  • New Fossil Anthropoid Skull from South Africa. In: Nature. Volume 138, 1936, pp. 486-488, doi: 10.1038 / 138486a0
  • On some new Pleistocene mammals from limestone caves of the Transvaal. In: South African Journal of Science. Volume 33, 1937, pp. 750-768
  • The Pleistocene Anthropoid Apes of South Africa. In: Nature. Volume 142, No. 3591, 1938, pp. 377–379, doi: 10.1038 / 142377a0 , full text (PDF)
  • Another new type of fossil ape-man. In: Nature. Volume 163, 1949, p. 57
  • Swartkran's Ape-Man, Paranthropus crassidens. In: Transvaal Museum. Volume 6, 1952

See also

literature

  • DMS Watson: Robert Broom. 1866-1951 . In: Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. Volume 8, No. 21, 1952, pp. 36-70.
  • Donald Johanson, Maitland Edey: Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind. Simon & Schuster, New York 1990, ISBN 0-671-25036-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Royal archive winners 1949-1900 of the Royal Society
  2. ^ Robert Broom, GWH Scheffers (ed.): The South African Fossil Ape-Men: The Australopithecinae. 272 pages, Transvaal Museum Memoir No. 2, Pretoria 1946
  3. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 12, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Robert Broom: Swartkran's Ape-Man, Paranthropus crassidens. Transvaal Museum, Volume 6, 1952
  5. ^ Virginia Morell, Ancestral Passions , Chapter 13.
personal data
SURNAME Broom, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African doctor and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Paisley , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 1951