Brooms

Brooms

Robert Broom was born in Scotland in 1866 to a poor family. Educated as a doctor specializing in midwifery, he used that profession to support himself while travelling the world. Fascinated by the origin of the mammals, he travelled to Australia in 1892. Five years later, he went to South Africa, where he would stay for the rest of his life.In 1910 Broom's insistence on the theory of evolution cost him his position at the University of Stellenbosch, an extremely conservative religious institution, and he started practicing medicine in the remote Karroo region of South Africa. He also practised paleontology, becoming the world's leading expert on the mammal-like reptiles which were found in abundance in the region. His paleontological work was so highly regarded that in 1920 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.In 1934, aged 68, he gave up his medical practice to take a position at the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria. In 1936 he decided to search for more of Dart's australopithecines, and in the same year found a fragmentary skull of an adult at Sterkfontein (which he initially placed in a new genus, Plesianthropus). In 1938, he found the first robust australopithecine skull at Kromdraai after a schoolboy discovered some teeth at the site.

Brooms

Brooms

Brooms

Brooms

Brooms

Brooms

Brooms

Brooms

Brooms