The Yowie Mystery - Living Fossils from the Dreamtime.


Jonathan Swift [1667-1745] in his book, “Gulliver’s Travels” [1726], described Australia long before the voyage of Captain James Cook RN [1770], with information which could only have come from ancient Chinese writings on the mysterious southern continent. He also described a primitive hairy race that inhabited that land as the Yahoos. Photo courtesy of the British Information Service, London UK.	The Yowie Mystery - Living Fossils from the Dreamtime. Copyright © 2007 by Rex Gilroy All rights reserved First Edition Rex and Heather Gilroy are recognised internationally as Australia’s foremost relict hominid researchers. This book celebrates Rex Gilroy’s 50 years as the ‘father’ of Yowie research. Rex and Heather are also recognised internationally as one of the world’s foremost husband and wife research teams in the field of ‘Unexplained’ mysteries. These daring and outspoken researchers are no friends of the Australian hard-core, narrow-minded scientific establishment, who would prefer that books of the kind produced by the Gilroys were prevented from publication. When not carrying out field work, Rex and his wife Heather [a Registered Nurse/Midwife by profession] are at home writing books, surrounded by their huge reference library of books on all manner of scientific subjects. Besides their many and varied researches, Rex and Heather Gilroy are also involved in community service work as members of the Rotary Club of Katoomba.	Dead Horse Gap, near Thredbo. This wild region of the Snowy Mountains has been a “hairy man” locale since the first years of 19th century settlement hereabouts. During June 1999 a stockman was riding his horse through wild scrub overlooking the road near where this photo was taken, when he spotted a number of “huge man-like footprints” in a mud patch. Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2007

CHAPTER FIVE
SKULLS OF CONTENTION – HOMO ERECTUS IN AUSTRALIA

We began this book with an account of my discovery of the skull endocast of an ancestral hominid from a deposit of solidified ash and mud, being the remains of a volcanic eruption in the Bega district of south coastal New South Wales, which scientists have dated to around 7 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pliocene period.

There can be no question of the situation and age in which this startling relic was found. To date this is the most important fossil hominid skull-type I have discovered in a lifetime of archaeological and anthropological research; it is the “skull of skulls” that I have for many years often said to colleagues that I hoped one day to find, namely the oldest hominid skull in Australia. And yet, who can say what might lie waiting for me to discover on future searches?

This skull was of course followed by other examples of the same race, now named proto-Homo vulcanicus, so that further fossil remains must indeed await discovery here. Every time, over the years, that a new fossil skull-type has been recovered by Heather and I, we have increased our knowledge of the true age of Man on this continent, and gradually earlier theories have been discarded in favour of the revelations provided by the latest finds.

For example, I had long believed that Homo erectus entered Australia from south-east Asia to evolve into the first modern humans here before he appeared elsewhere in the world. This view is changing to one of an Australian origin for Homo erectus, in the wake of the Bega skull-types. The proto-Homo vulcanicus race dates to the very beginning of the Pliocene period at least 7 million years ago. This creates a lengthy gap between the Miocene [17 million years old] primate hand and feet impressions [see Chapter Four] and the Bega Pliocene endocasts of at least 11 million years which has yet to be filled with fossils covering the primate to hominid evolution developments which occurred in Australia during that period.

Until recently there existed a gap of 5 million years between the vulcanicus race and the proto-Homo erectus skull of Katoomba, NSW. This has now been filled by the Homo eolithicus and Homo Prometheus skull-types. It is certain that there is a growing evolutionary progression of fossil skull-types in Australia, leading to Homo erectus and ourselves. This evidence is not “politically correct” and like so much other worldwide fossil and other evidence of humankind’s beginnings featured in Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson’s “Forbidden Archaeology” [1998] it will go unrecognised by a scientific community who persist in the “nobody before the Aborigines” dogma!

Rex Gilroy
Australian Yowie Research Centre,
Katoomba, NSW
Monday 25th June 2007