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.

Jonathan Swift
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.

Dead Horse Gap
Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2007

Excerpts from - "The Yowie Mystery" - Living Fossils from the Dreamtime.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
HOMO ERECTUS AND THE PYGMIES

Pgymy Skull
A left profile view of the incomplete pygmy skull from Mt Helena.
Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2007.

It appears quite evident to the authors from the fossil evidence gathered by us, that there is a continuing evolutionary progression, beginning perhaps around 17 million years ago with a race of primitive ancestral hominids, through to the beginning of the Pliocene, and finally around the end of that era into the Pleistocene with the appearance of proto-Homo erectus and his later Homo erectus offshoot, culminating in Homo sapiens by at least 400,000 -300,000 years ago.

Somewhere along the way in the course of this evolutionary progression there were genetic mutations. These mutations saw the appearance of giant hominid forms as already stated in the previous chapter and also pygmy forms. When exactly these evolutionary offshoots developed remains a mystery to scientists, so their timing at our present knowledge is open to speculation.

We would here remind the reader that we are speaking of fossil evidence recovered in Australia and not Asia or Africa and therefore the evidence presented by us remains highly controversial and not ‘politically correct’. Yet our theory we believe, in the current climate of speculation, based as it is upon the interpretation of the fossil evidence at our disposal, should be treated as yet another alternative explanation of the giant and pygmy evolutionary problem.

Palaeoanthropological finds made in Africa have long ago shown that our hominid ancestors were small in stature to begin with. ‘Lucy’ discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 by Donald C. Johansson was no more than 3½ ft [1.1m] in height. Lucy, an Australopithecine, lived around 3.4 million years ago, while the Bega district New South Wales skull endocasts are of beings between 1.1m and 1.53m in height who lived 7 million years ago.

There is no relationship between the two discoveries as Australopithecus was confined to Africa, unless some future scientific discovery proves otherwise. All that can be said of the Bega district fossils at present are that they are an ancestral form on the way to Homo erectus. The authors have found a number of fossil footprint sites dating from Pliocene times, containing both giant-size and modern human-size tracks, including child-size examples, whether these later specimens are those of juveniles or pygmy hominids remains unestablished; although the presence of giant hominid tracks in Pliocene deposits clearly shows that these beings had evolved from the ancestral hominid line by this time.

It is also possible that, while some groups of the small ancestral hominids began to increase in height, others for one genetic reason or another did not, thus forming the earliest pygmy Homo line.

The available fossil skeletal evidence of giant hominids found by us, already described in the previous chapter, so far only dates from the later half of the Pleistocene period and displays Homo erectus relationships. Our pygmy Homo fossil evidence on the other hand, suggests that, apart from possible beginnings some time in the Pliocene, the Pygmy Homo line was well established by early Pleistocene times with the fossil evidence showing that more than one race is present in the fossil record.

This is demonstrated by recent Gilroy fossil skull discoveries in South Australia and Western Australia, and also by finds in the Sydney area made by Greg Foster revealed in this Chapter. This chapter concerns itself with the fossil evidence for a Pygmy evolution in Australia, separate to that of African pygmies. Anthropologists recognise that the Pygmy has a considerable antiquity in Africa, whereas in Australia our scientists have only ever recognised one form, namely pygmy Australoids of the Far North Queensland rainforests, which they believe are related to the former Tasmanian Australoids whose features they shared, although the latter people were slightly taller.

As the traditions of our Aboriginal people will show later in this book, the early tribespeople recognised a number of pygmy races throughout the continent, which they collectively designated as the “little hairy people”, once again as with the taller Homo erectus/Yowie, they were described as ‘hairy’ due to the animal hide cloaks they wore...

Our theory is that, possibly Homo erectus fosterii may have been the ‘father’ of the later pygmy-size Homo essingensis race, migrating bands of which might have moved northwards out of Australia over the former land shelf, to establish themselves in the region that was to become the Indonesian islands chain towards the close of the Pleistocene period. Here they gradually evolved into what are now known as the ‘Hobbits’.

More fossil material is needed from Australia to support our theory, but we are confident that this will eventually be uncovered.

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

Australian Yowie Research Index | Entire Web site © Rex & Heather Gilroy | URU Publications ® ™ Rex & Heather Gilroy. All Rights Reserved

Excerpts from - "The Yowie Mystery" - Living Fossils from the Dreamtime.
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Mysterious Australia | Entire Web site © Rex & Heather Gilroy | URU Publications ® ™ Rex & Heather Gilroy. All Rights Reserved

Australian Yowie Research Centre Est...1976 by Rex Gilroy for the sole purpose of Scientific Study of the Australian Hairy - man
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