Word: zinjanthropus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY SPECIAL (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). More on evolution. "Dr. Leakey and the Dawn of Man" deals with Anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey and his family of fossil hunters in East Africa. After more than 30 years, the Leakeys have made such finds as Zinjanthropus, a manlike creature believed to have lived 1,750,000 years ago, and the 2,000,000-year-old Homo habilis, who was found among some of the earliest signs of "culture," and is believed to be a direct ancestor of modern...
...this treasure chest came bones of a lowbrowed creature that Dr. Leakey named Zinjanthropus and assigned in 1959 to an honored position in man's direct ancestry. He was sure that Zinjanthropus was a toolmaker because crude stone tools were found near his remains. Many anthropologists disagreed with both these conclusions, and now Dr. Leakey has changed his mind. He now believes that Zinjanthropus was an Australopithecine, a nonhuman vegetarian of low intelligence and not a toolmaker...
...same and nearby strata came bones of a creature that is much more manlike. His well-formed foot shows that he walked erect. Despite his small brain size, he had a fairly high forehead, not a flat one like that of Zinjanthropus. He was probably about 4 ft. tall, but Dr. Leakey thinks that he used tools and weapons. Sometimes he may have killed and eaten his stupid cousin Zinjanthropus...
...manlike. Others agree that they are extremely interesting but maintain that they are too fragmentary to assign a definite place in the primate family tree. Leakey's Homo habilis may well become established as an ancestral man-if he is not first demoted to an apeman, as was Zinjanthropus...
Oldest Man. Atomic physics, says Brothwell in the current issue of Discovery magazine, can take a large share of the credit. When a manlike creature, Zinjanthropus, was discovered in East Africa three years ago, geologists from the University of California, using a potassium-argon isotope dating system, were able to show that flat-browed Zinjanthropus lived some 1,750,000 years back in prehistory, the oldest manlike animal yet found. By measuring the amount of potassium 40 and its decay product, argon 40, in a digger's find, scientists conceivably can fix an object...