A search for evidence of a remote human past in Africa

Abstract

The changes that primate skulls have undergone are of utmost importance regarding teeth, volume of braincase and position of the foramen magnum. Should the foramen magnum face directly downward, the head would have been carried over the spine, proving erectness and bipedalism. The knowledge of the half-life of certain radio-active isotopes is the key for calculating the age of a fossil. Changes of any part of an animal becoming fossilized are very slight. Chances of finding it are so much more slight. In Oligocene times the anthropoid primates were successful tree-dwellers. The Fayum was heavily wooded, a fine place for proto-monkeys to live - and evolve. Evolve they did, for the Fayum contains a uniquely rich deposit of primate fossils.