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Cape Town - Leading South African paleoanthropologist Phillip Tobias died on Thursday, The Gauteng Tourism Authority announced.
Tobias died after a long illness.
The GTA said he was a “leading South African academic and scientist who shared a lifelong passion for the study of man and human ancestry with his colleagues at Wits University and the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site”.
He started the current programme of excavation at Sterkfontein in 1966 which is now the longest continuously active palaeoanthropological dig anywhere in the world, and has produced over 1 000 hominin fossils.
“In addition, tens of thousands of fossils of animals which lived contemporaneously with human ancestors have been excavated, processed, described, analysed and classified,” said the GTA.
He was 86 years old.
Tobias died after a long illness.
The GTA said he was a “leading South African academic and scientist who shared a lifelong passion for the study of man and human ancestry with his colleagues at Wits University and the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site”.
He started the current programme of excavation at Sterkfontein in 1966 which is now the longest continuously active palaeoanthropological dig anywhere in the world, and has produced over 1 000 hominin fossils.
“In addition, tens of thousands of fossils of animals which lived contemporaneously with human ancestors have been excavated, processed, described, analysed and classified,” said the GTA.
He was 86 years old.
