Background to the great scientific discovery of uncovering "a link as yet unknown, between apes and man."
__Man Who Found the Missing Link: Eugene DuBois and His Lifelong Quest to Prove Darwin Right_ by Pat Shipman
"Eugène Dubois was born on January 28, 1858, an interesting between-time in science. It was some eighteen months after the first Neanderthal skeleton was found in Germany and a little more than a year before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in England. Believing that a powerful truth must lie in Darwin's deceptively simple ideas, Dubois -- a brilliant young Dutch physician and anatomist -- vowed to discover it. There is a link, he declared, a link as yet unknown, between apes and Man. Finding it would be the greatest scientific discovery ever, and the name Eugène Dubois would be remembered. . . .
After five years, two weeks, and three days of life-threatening work, Dubois' excavations yielded the missing link. It was a form he called Pithecanthropus erectus, a heavily fossilized skullcap, tooth, and femur (thigh bone) of an ape-man the like of which the world had never seen. Barely surviving a harrowing sea journey during which the precious fossils were nearly lost, Dubois arrived in Europe triumphant in having accomplished the impossible."
Little did he know that a mere 150 later, an offsring of this missingly link would come to inhabit 1600 Pennsylavania Ave, a residence reserved for the once great position of President of the United States.
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