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Book Review – Buchbesprechung – Livre nouveau P. V. Tobias: The Cranium and Maxillary Dentition of Australopithecus (Zinjan-thropus) boisei. In: L. S. B. Leakey, Olduvai Gorge, Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press, 1967. XVI + 264 pages. Price: $ 17.50. This volume comprises the detailed anatomical description, in classical style, of the first australopithecine skull discovered in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania in 1959. For almost a decade arguments have waxed fast and furious concerning the taxonomic status of this skull (and subsequently discovered specimens), and special 78 Book Review – Buchbesprechung – Livre nouveau conferences have been held to place the main contestants in the same arena. Usually the audience had to «listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope» (Samuel Johnson) as theories based upon little fact were expounded. It is a sad state of affairs in the development of physical anthropology as an objective discipline that leaders in the field can say so much about so little and apparently get away with it. Tobias has set the record straight, at least with respect to the factual data. It is now possible for other than those few who have been fortunate enough to handle the specimen, usually briefly, to consider the data and to formulate opinions. Throughout the text he repeatedly offers apologia for the original mistaken diagnosis of a new genus, even though it was made in the face of opposition. This volume declares tenfold and more times that “Zínjanthropus” portrays the combination of the major features of Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus, and the author happily sinks the latter genus into Australopithecus. He should have signalled misidentification by using quotation marks (iiZinjanthropus,’’) throughout the book. Furthermore, although he sinks the subgenera (p. 231) proposed by Leakey, he persists in publicizing “Zinjanthro-/)ws” as a subgenus in the title of the volume. It is difficult to defend hasty declarations, occasionally paraded as dogma, before students trained to consider the facts with great caution and thoroughness prior to formulating a diagnosis. The volume can be divided into three unequal sections: (1) The main body sets out a detailed, unselected mass of descriptive data–the calvaria, its crests and interior, the cranial base, thickness, endocranial cast, face, sinuses and pneuma-tisation, dental arcade, palate and the dentition–174 pages in all; (2) a summary of these features–descriptive and metrical–24 pages; and (3) the taxonomic status of Australopithecus boisei, and its cultural and phylogenetic relationship to other australopithecines–9 pages. The first section contains an observation on virtually every foramen, ridge, bulge, bony nook and cranny visible without much discriminatory weighting or sifting of the evidence as regards relative importance in the evolutionary sense. Nevertheless, Tobias is to be congratulated on having recorded such meticulous detail for other scholars. This, in conjunction with the excellent photographs, should provide ample grist to anyone’s mill for critical evaluation of the specimen. A critical examination of the data in the first section would center around the haphazard analysis of the material which is restricted to only the simplest of available modern methods. Such a critique would entail considerable space. A few bones of contention and questions, some albeit