- Theodor Verhoeven
Father Theodorus L. Verhoeven (1907 - 1990) was a Dutch
Catholic priest ,missionary and amateur archaeologist who was responsible for significant paleontological discoveries inIndonesia of archaicstone tool s in association with thefossil s ofstegodon tids, or dwarf elephants, some 800,000 years old, indicating that islands inWallacea had been reached by "Homo erectus " before modern humans appeared there.Verhoeven studied classics, and later archaeology, at the
University of Utrecht . He spent several months inItaly studying excavations atPompeii ,Herculaneum and Ostia Tiberia for his doctoral thesis, receiving his doctorate in 1948. He was subsequently sent to the island ofFlores in Indonesia as a missionary, where he stayed for 17 years.In 1950 Verhoeven commenced archaeological work on the island of
Flores . In 1957 he discovered the first stegondontid fossils reported from Ola Bula in Flores, along withLower Palaeolithic stone blades and flakes. In 1965 he found a similar concurrence of stone tools with remains of Stegodon-dominatedmegafauna at nearby Mata Menge.References
* Bednarik, Robert G. (2002). The maritime dispersal of Pleistocene humans. [http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/mariners/shared_files/dispersal.pdf] Accessed 3 June 2007
* van der Plas, M. (2007). A new model for the evolution of "Homo sapiens" from the Wallacean islands. "PalArch’s Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" 1(1): 1-121. [http://www.palarch.nl/Palaeontology/ver_2007_1_1.pdf] Accessed 3 June 2007ee also
* "
Homo floresiensis "
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