John Talbot Robinson

His most famous discovery (with Robert Broom) was the nearly complete fossil skull of the hominin species Australopithecus africanus, known as Mrs. Ples.

[2] He started his doctorate in marine biology in Cape Town and even went so far as to publish descriptions of new diatoms and copepods[1] but he interrupted it by moving to the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria at the end of 1945 to take up the position of "assistant professional officer".

They focused on excavations at the caves of Sterkfontein (where they discovered "Mrs. Ples" a specimen of Australopithecus africanus, in 1947), Swartkrans (which yielded several fossils of Paranthropus robustus and Telanthropis capensis) and Kromdraai.

[2] In 1955 Robinson completed his PhD in zoology at the University of Cape Town but with a dissertation "The Dentition of the Australopithecinae", published 1956 and arguably his most important work.

The only substantial australopithecine samples known at that time were excavated by Robinson and Broom since Louis Leakey did not find any fossils in Olduvai Gorge until 1959.

[4] The presence of both Paranthropus robustus and Telanthropis capensis at Swartkrans provided the first evidence of the co-existence of two hominid species in the Pleistocene in Africa.