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Eugène Dubois
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Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois (28 January 1858 – 16 December 1940) was a Dutch anatomist. He earned world-wide fame for his discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus (later redesignated Homo erectus), or 'Java Man'.
Human discoveries
Although hominid fossils had been found and studied before, Dubois was the first anthropologist to embark upon a purposeful search for them. He was convinced that the origins of the human species must be in the tropics.
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Encyclopedia
Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois (28 January 1858 – 16 December 1940) was a Dutch anatomist. He earned world-wide fame for his discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus (later redesignated Homo erectus), or 'Java Man'.
Biography
Dubois was born in Eijsden, Netherlands, Europe.
Human discoveries
Although hominid fossils had been found and studied before, Dubois was the first anthropologist to embark upon a purposeful search for them. He was convinced that the origins of the human species must be in the tropics. For this reason he joined the Dutch army in the Dutch East Indies (the Dutch colony that would later become independent Indonesia).
Between 1886 and 1895, Dubois searched at potential sites near rivers and in caves, first on the island of Sumatra, then on the Indonesian island of Java.
In 1891, Dubois discovered remains of what he described as "a species in between humans and apes". He called his finds Pithecanthropus erectus ("ape-human which stood upright") or Java Man. Today, they are classified as Homo erectus ("human which stood upright"). These were the first specimens of early hominid remains to be found outside of Africa or Europe.
In 1895, Dubois returned to Europe and toured the continent to convince his colleagues that he had indeed found a missing link. Although most anthropologists were intrigued, they did not always agree with Dubois' interpretations. After that, Dubois refused others access to his fossils, until he was forced to do so in 1923.
Later years
In 1897, the University of Amsterdam awarded Dubois a honorary doctorate in botany and zoology, but he had to wait until 1899 for a professorship. In that year, he was appointed a professor in geology, a function that did not keep him from his research in anatomy. He was also (from 1897 until 1928) keeper of paleontology, geology and mineralogy at Teylers' Museum, where he also kept the H. erectus remains.
Although the scientific debate slowly began to turn in his favour in the 1920s and 1930s, he died embittered in 1940. He was buried in Venlo.
See also
Further Reading
- Pat Shipman, The Man who Found the Missing Link. Eugène Dubois and His Lifelong Quest to Prove Darwin Right (New York etc: Simon and Schuster, 2001). A partly romanticized biography of Dubois, not annotated, with index.
External links
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