I would like to begin by saying that the manuscript in this volume by my dear friend and mentor, Professor Phillip V. Tobias, is particularly enjoyable to me because it allows me to refl ect, and remember some of the events that he describes. I think my father probably thought that he had successfully browbeaten Phillip to accept the designation of Homo habilis as a new species of our genus. It is, I am told, a trait that I have inherited from Louis: we think we have achieved something, or persuaded someone and proceed on that basis when, in fact, we have made nowhere near the point we were trying to make. So I think that Phillip and my father were both correct in their beliefs: Philip was not browbeaten, but Louis certainly would have tried, although he would have denied all along that he was trying! I particularly like Phillip's reference to a characteristic that Louis had (and which I am told I also have). He would pick something up and say, “Isn't that obvious?” to which people would respond “No!” This is exactly the response I get, and the response that my father got from Phillip. In this case, at least, Phillip has had the good grace to say that Louis had been right, and that it had been obvious — Phillip just hadn't noticed the obviousness. So, for the family history, let me just give my Dad a little support, which I was loathe to give when he was alive, because I now fi nd myself more inclined to appreciate his qualities.
I totally agree with the validity of the taxon Homo habilis, and I think that Phillip Tobias, along with John Napier and Louis Leakey, was perfectly correct in launching that species (Leakey et al., 1964). The type specimen, OH 7, which Phillip has alluded to as “Jonny's child,” and whose mandible and parietals formed the basis of the new designation, is Homo habilis. And, I think it is correctly a species of the genus Homo (cf. Wood and Collard, 1999; Collard and Wood, 2007; Wood, 2009). By the same token, however, I think some of the specimens from Olduvai that Phillip (Tobias, 1991) and others (Johanson et al., 1987) have included in H. habilis still have a question mark next to that allocation.
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Leakey, R.E. (2009). Early Humans: Of Whom Do We Speak?. In: Grine, F.E., Fleagle, J.G., Leakey, R.E. (eds) The First Humans – Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9980-9_1
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