THE MISSING LINK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 140, 16 June 1932, Page 8

THE MISSING LINK

AFRICAN INVESTIGATIONS. SCIENTIFIC SENSATION Will‘‘ the missing link ’’ be discovered at last? A native village, consisting of a few grass huts, on the shores of Lake Victoria, near Kendu Bay, in Kenya, has provided archaeological evidence which is likely to startle the world of scientists. Dr. L. 8. B. Leakey, of Cambridge, leader of the East African Archaeological Expedition, who has been exploring the district for the past five months, reports that he has found the lower jawbone of the “homo sapiens” type of human being (i.e., the modern species of man) in deposits similar to those of the lowest bed at Oldaway (Tanganyika), found by Dr. Leakey in October last. Dr. Leakey puts the newly-discovered Lake Victoria man one step further back than the Oldaway man, who may have lived some 2,000,000 years ago. The mystery is deepened by the discovery in the same area of fragments of anthropoid apes, which Dr. Leakey is sending immediately to British experts. These were found in Miocene deposits. This last discovery, coupled with that of the Lake Victoria man, leads Dr. Leakey to the belief that “the missing link” will bo finally established. The Oldaway skeleton was discovered in 1913 by a German professor, Dr. Hans Reck, but he was unable to find evidence on the spot to date the discovery. Dr. Leakey, however, last October discovered evidence in the form of extinct animals and fauna, which proved that the Oldaway man went back to an age more remote than that of any similar discovery. Tools wore found in all the Oldaway beds. Dr. Leakey also found part of the skeleton of a dinotherium —a prehistoric form of elephant. It was formerly believed that the first man was hundreds of thousands of years later ’than the dinotherium. The jawbone was found in the same deposits as tools of the dinotherium and prc-Chcllean period. There other “homo sapiens” skulls were also found from deposits containing fauna identical with the Oklaway skeleton. Three examples of anthropoid ape (it is added) wore found on Rustinga Island.