Robert Broom

From EvoWiki

Robert Broom was South Africa's most prestigious paleontologist of the early 20th Century, and though his work spanned a variety of taxa his most important contributions to the science of avian phylogeny and origins, was his specific elaboration of a "pseudosuchian" hypothesis whereby basal Archosauria gave rise to birds, and theropods merely converged with Aves. Broom advanced Euparkeria capensis, a marvelous reptile from the Lower Triassic beds of South Africa, which he described in 1913, as precisely the sort of "pseudosuchian" progenitor of birds one should expect. Broom's work was profoundly influential and largely led Heilmann to author the most eloquent and definitive account of what has commonly been called the "thecodont" hypothesis for bird origins, in his 1926 tome.

Broom is also widely regarded for his discovery of the first robust australopithecine specimen in 1938, and, in 1947, a partial skeleton instrumental in establishing bipedality in Australopithecus africanus.