Evening star., 1948-09-15
Stars, Men and Atoms
Africun Fossils Link Man
With Monkeys, Not Apes
African Species 20 Million Years Ago
Had Bones Similar to Humans,
By Thomas r. Henry

I1dQ DOHSS SII1lIdT 10 I1uIIfanSs
By Thomas r. Henry
Africa is yielding a lot of hitherto unknown
missing links of the human family tree:
10000 ,0Oc- -year-old fossil bones of big monkeys
who walked erect and who had small brains,
but many OF whose bones show strong devi-
ations toward those of man.
The finds throw serious doubt on whether
mans ancestors ever were the tree-dweers
of the comic strips and on the descent Of
man from the same family stock as the
great apes. 1t appears more likely that 1s
came from progressive group of slender,
long tailed monkeys which spent most of their
time on the ground. If gorilla, gibbon and
chimpanzee came from the same stock-which
appears dcubtful-they have followed a quite
different road of evolution than the human
species.
Most notable are the finds of DR.. Robert
Broom in South Africa and of DR.. L. S. B.
Leakey on All island in Lake Victoria Nyasa in
the Keys province of East Africa. A cast Of
Dr.. Leakey's chief discovery has just been re-
ceved at the United States National Museum in
Washington other material of the same type
has been found by the University of California
African expedition which now is in the field.
Discoveries Significant.
Dir. Brooms discoveries appear to be the most
significant. They are skulls and bones of ape.
like creatures known as auStralopithecadae.
They were animals approximately the size OF
mar. They had brains roughly the size OF
those OF tie chimpanzee and gorilla, with a ca
pacity of about 500 cubic centimeters. This is
compared to capacity of about 1000 cubic
centmeters for the most primitive men, Ths
contours of The skulls show, however, that these
brains were taking on Enthusiastically hu-
man pattern
This is especially true of the frontal region
OF the skull, which constitutes the outstanding
difference between man and the great apes.
Within it came to be located the centers OF
thought and imagination. In humans, the
head has been thrust forward and is held
erect. This has required the moving forward
of the so-caled foramen magnum the open
ing through which the spinal cord joins the
brain This forward motion is apparent in
the South African skeletons,
closer link is provided by some OF the
limb bones, according to report just made
by DR.. w. E. LeGros Clark of the Oxford
University Department of Human Anatomy. At
least one of them corresponds very closely to
the bone which serves the same function in
man, and is entirely different from that OF
any of the great apes.
Even more helpful however, are some bones
found by DR.. Leakey in the Kenya Colony.
These are remains Of more than so apes with
human-like characters which now are being
studied at Oxford They date from the Mo-
Gene period of geological time, about 2ooOo,O00
years ago, when animal life was just taking
on its present forms. At that time it has been
assumed, the ape line was just coming into
existence. No skulls have been found, but
some idea of what they looked like can be
formed from the jaws.
Jaws, teeth and limb bones are closer to the
human than to the man-like apes. They also
are closer, in some respects, to the African
monkeys They came from lightly built, active
runners and leapers. not tree climbers. Some
of them were as large as the gorilla.
The goblin metal cobalt, OF which the aver
age human being gets about 300th of an
ounce a day in an ordinary diet and for
which psychologists have been unable to find
any function, now appears to be one of the
essential elements of life
Last winter the laboratories of Merck and
Co.. in Railway, N. j., and the Department OF
Agriculture announced discovery of the most
powerful vitamin known. The vitamin, BIZ,
effective in doses as small as a thousandth OF
gram, apparently is the elusive substance
in liver which prevents pernicious anemia.
The Merck chemists have just reported to the
American Association for the Advancement OF
Science that the most notable ingredient
in this material is cobalt--a silvery- y-white
metal akin to nickel and iron but with quite
different chemical reactions
1t was named cobalt, or goblin, by Ger
mar chemists n century because of thA
difficulty of separating it from its related
elements. They thought a goblin was inter-
1ering with the process.
Cobalt Is in Plants.
Infinitesimable amounts of cobalt are con-
tanned in most plants but they appear more
than sufficient, If the body can make use of
them, to satisfy all requirements. BIZ was
isolated as blood-red crystalline compound
the center of whose molecule is always a cobalt
atom Attached to 1t are atoms of phosphorus
and sulfur. Partly because of the extremely
small amounts involved analysis has been DIFF
ficult and still Is far from complete, according
to the report OF DR.. Edward L. Rickes and
his associates of the Merck Research Labora-
tories
Experiments have shown that cobalt given
alone has no effect on any of the anemias.
The cause of these diseases apparently Is
some failure of the body chemistry to get the
goblin atom into the proper complex.