Professor Dr. Gustav Heinrich Ralph (often cited as G. H. R.) von Koenigswald (1902-1982) was a distinguished paleontologist and geologist who conducted research on hominins, including Homo erectus. Ralph von Koensinswald made many contributions to paleontology during his career. His discoveries and studies of hominid fossils in Java and his studies of other important fossils of south-eastern Asia firmly established his reputation as one of the leading figures of 20th Century paleo-anthropology. A paleontologist carefully chips rock from a column of dinosaur vertebrae. ... A geologist is a contributor to the science of geology, studying the physical structure and processes of the Earth. ... Genera Gorilla Pan (chimpanzees) Homo (humans) Paranthropus (extinct) Australopithecus (extinct) Sahelanthropus (extinct) Ardipithecus (extinct) Kenyanthropus (extinct) Homininae is a subfamily of Hominidae, including Homo sapiens and some extinct relatives, as well as the gorillas and the chimpanzees. ... Binomial name †Homo erectus (Dubois, 1892) Subspecies †Homo erectus palaeojavanicus †Homo erectus soloensis Homo erectus (upright man) is a hominin species that is believed to be an ancestor of modern humans (with Homo heidelbergensis usually treated as an intermediary step). ...

von Koenigswald was born in Berlin on November 13, 1902, during a period of intense interest and rapid growth in the study of evolution. He began his fossil vertebrate collection when he was fifteen with the acquisition of a rhinoceros molar during an excursion to Mauer, Germany. He subsequently studied geology and paleontology at Berlin, Tübingen, Cologne and Munich. For other uses, see Berlin (disambiguation). ... Genera Ceratotherium Dicerorhinus Diceros Rhinoceros Coelodonta (extinct)Elasmotherium (extinct) A rhinoceros (commonly called a rhino for short) is any of five surviving species of odd-toed ungulate in the family Rhinocerotidae. ... Geology (from Greek γη- (ge-, the earth) and λογος (logos, word, reason)) is the science and study of the Earth, its composition, structure, physical properties, history and the processes that shape it. ...

Java

Von Koenigswald's teacher Ferdinand Broili had good contacts with the Dutch geologists K. Martin and L.M.R. Rutten. Through these contacts Von Koenigswald could join the Geological Survey of Java as paleontologist in late 1930. Financed in part through the Carnegie Foundation, he began a systematic survey of the country. von Koenigswald made his most significant finds in this area of Asia between January 1931 and 1941. At age 33, he announced the descovery of a juvenile calvarium from Mojokerto and assigned it to Pithecanthropus erectus. This identification was criticized by the respected, but now aging paleontologist Eugène Dubois, but von Koenigswald did not change his identification. Between 1937 and 1941, a number of important hominid specimens emerged from Java. One of von Koenigswald's assistants brought him a piece of a Pithecanthropus skull in 1937. Unfortunately, an offer to pay for additional fossils by the piece led to specimens being broken into splinters by native helpers. One skull cap, the first Sangiran calvarium, was an exact duplicate of Dubois' Pithecanthropus calvarium. Other well-known fossils include the Sangiran B mandible, Sangiran 4 including the well-known maxilla with the diastema, and the 1939 and 1941 jaws assigned by von Koenigswald to Meganthropus palaeojavanicus. Karl Martin during the Moluccas expedition of 1892 Johann Karl Ludwig Martin (November 24, 1851, Jever (Ostfriesland) - 1942, Leiden) was a German geologist. ... Louis Martin Robert Rutten (June 4, 1884 Maastricht - February 11, 1946 Utrecht) was a Dutch geologist. ... Java (Indonesian, Javanese, and Sundanese: Jawa) is an island of Indonesia, and the site of its capital city, Jakarta. ... The Carnegie Foundation is named after Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American idealist and industrial magnate, whose generous gift made it possible to carry out plans for the construction of the Peace Palace in 1903, the year in which it was founded. ... Calvaria (or calvarium) can refer to: A portion of the skull [1] The Tambalacoque This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ... Mojokerto is one of the districts in East Java Province, Indonesia. ... Pithecanthropus erectus was the name first given to the Homo erectus specimen, also known as Java Man, by its discoverer Eugène Dubois. ... Eugene Dubois (January 28, 1858 - December 16, 1940) was a Dutch anatomist, who earned world-wide fame with the discovery of Homo erectus in Java in 1891. ...

His work on the fossils of Central Java, particularly from Sangiran, led him to claim that the mammalian remains of the area could be assigned to all three levels of the Pleistocene. All Javanese hominid fossils recovered emerged from three major sets of beds: The Pleistocene epoch (pronounced like ply-stow-seen) is part of the geologic timescale. ...

• Pucangan formation, Jetis beds dated to the Early Pleistocene,
• the Kabuh formation, Trinil beds dated to the Middle Pleistocene, and
• the Ngandong beds dated to the Upper Pleistocene.

von Koenigswald pointed out that these and other fossil discoveries since 1917 contradicted the 19th century idea that humans had an ancestor with a modern brain and ape jaw, and actually suggested the opposite relationship. The Java fossils are currently housed in the Senckenberg Museum with the financial support of the Werner Reimers Foundation of Bad Homburg. Early Pleistocene (also known as Lower Pleistocene, or Calabrian) is a stage of the Pleistocene Epoch. ... The Middle Pleistocene is the central part of the Pleistocene Epoch from about 780,000 YA to the penultimate cold pulse at about 125,000 YA. Millions of Years Categories: Graphical timelines | Geology stubs | Pleistocene ... The Upper Pleistocene or Late Pleistocene is the final part of the Pleistocene Epoch from about 125,000 YA to the conventional end of the Ice Age at about 10,000 YA. Millions of Years Categories: Graphical timelines | Geology stubs | Pleistocene ...

In 1937, von Koenigswald hosted paleontologist Franz Weidenreich's visit to Java to examine recent discovery sites. In 1938 von Koenigswald and Weidenreich together announced the discovery of a new skull of Pithecanthropus (P. robustus). Early in 1939, von Koenigswald took several Javanese hominin specimens to Weidenreich in Peking, China. Comparing the Sangiran and Choukoutien hominids led the two scientists to conclude that the specimens were closely allied. They decided to abandon the genus Sinanthropus, combining all the specimens into the earlier-named genus Pithecanthropus. Later, Pithecanthropus was incorporated into the genus Homo as Homo erectus. Franz Weidenreich (7 June 1873, Edenkoben, Germany- 11 July 1948, New York City U.S.) was a German anatomist and physical anthropologist who studued human evolution. ... Beijing (Chinese: 北京; ; IPA: ), a city in northern China (formerly spelled in English as Peking or Peiking), is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). ... Species Homo sapiens sapiens See text for extinct species. ...

World War II

World War II brought difficulty and danger to von Koenigswald in Java. He managed to hide his fossils from the invading Japanese, and although he was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp, only one fossil skull was confiscated by the Japanese soldiers. It was presented to Emperor Hirohito but was recovered after the war. Combatants Allies: Poland, British Commonwealth, France/Free France, Soviet Union, United States, China, and others Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan, and others Casualties Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total dead: 50 million Military dead: 8 million Civilian dead: 4 million Total dead: 12 million World War II... A Prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of persons captured by the enemy in time of war. ...

During the war years, Weidenreich's description of Sinanthropus was published. In a borrowed office at the American Museum of Natural History, Weidenreich added to the their earlier work and reviewed the fossil record of human evolution, merging Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus into a new taxon, Homo erectus, with various geographic sub-species. He published descriptions and assigned scientific names to some of von Koenigswald's discoveries, as he and others presumed that von Koenigswald was dead at the hands of the Japanese. After the war, von Koenigswald worked with Weidenreich at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for eighteen months. The American Museum of Natural History is a landmark of Manhattans Upper West Side in New York, USA, at 79th Street and Central Park West. ... New York, New York redirects here. ...

The Netherlands

For the next twenty years, von Koenigswald filled a Chair of Palaeontology created for him at the Rijksuniversiteit at Utrecht in the Netherlands. During his academic career, he visited sites in North and South Africa (1951-52), the Philippines, Thailand and Borneo (1957), and Pakistan (1966-67). In Pakistan, von Koenigswald and his students found specimens which included a palate assigned to a new species of the hominoid genus Sivapithecus and teeth considered to belong to Ramapithecus. Borneo and Sulawesi. ... Species Sivapithecus indicus Sivapithecus ramapithecus Sivapithecus kenyapithecus Sivapithecus ouranopithecus Sivapithecus is the genus of extinct primates, any one of its species may have been the ancestor to the modern orangutans. ... Binomial name Sivapithecus ramapithecus Ramapithecus is an extinct primate erected from a two inch piece of a jawbone, with four teeth. ...

von Koenigswald studied the relationships between African, Asian and European hominoid fossils attributed to Ramapithecus or its close allies such as Graecopithecus of Greece andKenyapithecus of Fort Ternan, Kenya. It was his opinion that the Indian form was a hominid and the African form a pongid. This later led him to strongly press the claim of India as the original home of the Hominidae. Families Hylobatidae Hominidae Apes are the members of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates, including humans. ... Genera Subfamily Ponginae Pongo - orangutans Gigantopithecus† Sivapithecus† Lufengpithecus† Ankarapithecus† Subfamily Homininae Gorilla - gorillas Pan - chimpanzees Homo - Humans and their immediate ancestors Ouranopithecus† Paranthropus† Australopithecus† Sahelanthropus† Orrorin† Ardipithecus† Kenyanthropus† The hominids are the members of the biological family Hominidae (the great apes), which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. ...

After retiring from the Chair at Utrecht, the Werner-Reimers Foundation provided him with facilities at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. He, with the support of J. L. Franzen, directed this paleontological research center for the remaining fourteen years of his life. von Koenigswald died at his home in Bad Homburg near Frankfurt-am-Main in West Germany on July 10, 1982. Skyline of Frankfurt at night is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany. ...

Publications

• von Koenigswald, G. H. R., translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. "Evolution of Man." University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Paperback Series, Revised edition, 1976. ISBN 0472050206.

Reference

• Tattersall, Ian and Schwartz, Jeffrey. "Extinct Humans". Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado and Cumnor Hill, Oxford, 2000. ISBN 0-8133-3482-9 (hc)