Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [462]
Barlow told Broom that Gert Terblanche, a local schoolboy, had given him the fossil palate. Broom obtained some teeth from Gert, and together they went to the nearby Kromdraai farm, where the boy had gotten the teeth by pounding them from a fossil skull. Broom collected the skull fragments, and Gert also gave Broom a piece of lower jaw and more teeth. After reconstructing the partial skull, Broom saw it was different from the Sterkfontein type. He called the new creature Paranthropus robustus. As the name robustus indicates, this australopithecine hominid had a larger jaw and bigger teeth than Australopithecus africanus, represented by the Taung baby, and the gracile Plesianthropus specimens from Sterkfontein. The Kromdraai site is now considered to be approximately 1.0 to
1.2 million years old (Groves 1989, p. 198), although some have suggested an age of up to 1.8 million years (Tobias 1978, p. 67).
Broom also found at Kromdraai a fragment of humerus (the bone of the upper arm) and a fragment of ulna (one of the bones of the lower arm). He said: “had they been found isolated probably every anatomist in the world would say that they were undoubtedly human” (Broom 1950, p. 57).
In 1947, Le Gros Clark wrote that the humerus fragment from Paranthropus (TM 1517) displayed “a very close resemblance to the humerus of Homo sapiens and none of the distinctive features found in the recent anthropoid apes” (Zuckerman 1954, p. 310).
As might be expected, not everyone accepted this assessment of the TM 1517 humerus. In 1949, Straus said that “it is in general more like the average chimpanzee than like the average man.” But he added that “this probably should not be stressed since it consistently falls within the ranges of variation of both species” ( Zuckerman 1954, p. 311). A subsequent morphometric analysis done by H. M. McHenry (1972, p. 95) puts the TM 1517 humerus from Kromdraai “within the human range.” As we have seen, scientists attribute the TM 1517 humerus to Paranthropus robustus, a robust australopithecine. Significantly, a robust australopithecine humerus from Koobi Fora, Kenya (ER 739), fell outside the human range in McHenry’s study (1972, p. 95). So perhaps the TM 1517 humerus belonged to something other than a robust australopithecine. It is not impossible that the Kromdraai humerus and ulna, like the Sterkfontein femur, belonged to more advanced hominids, perhaps resembling anatomically modern humans.
World War II interrupted Broom’s excavation work in South Africa. During this interval, he began the task of fully describing his Australopithecus discoveries, including Dart’s Taung specimen.
After the war, Broom found another australopithecine skull (St 5) at Sterkfontein (Figure 11.6). Later he discovered further remains of an adult female australopithecine (St 14)—including parts of the pelvis, vertebral column, and legs. Their morphology, along with certain features of the Sterkfontein skulls, demonstrated, in Broom’s opinion, that the australopithecines had walked erect(Zuckerman 1954, p. 310).
Figure 11.6. Left: The skull of a female chimpanzee (after Zuckerman 1954, p. 308). Right: The St 5 Plesianthropus (Australopithecus) transvaalensis skull discovered by Robert Broom at Sterkfontein, South Africa (Broom et al. 1950, plate 1).
11.3.4 Paranthropus and Telanthropus
At Swartkrans, near Sterkfontein, Robert Broom and J. T. Robinson found, beginning in 1947, fossils of a robust australopithecine called Paranthropus crassidens (large-toothed near-man). This creature had large strong teeth and a bony crest on top of the skull. The crest served as the point of attachment for big jaw muscles.
In addition to the fossils of Paranthropus crassidens,