Theodorus (Theo) Lambertus Verhoeven, SVD, (17 September 1907, Uden, The Netherlands – 3 June 1990, Antwerp, Belgium)[1] [2][3] was a Dutch missionary and archaeologist who has become famous by his discovery of stone tools on the Indonesian island of Flores, in association with the c. 800,000-year-old fossils of stegodontids, or dwarf elephants, from which he concluded that islands in Wallacea had been reached by Homo erectus before modern humans appeared there.
During the war he played a crucial role in the Resistance movement by accommodating - contrary to the orders of his superiors - dozens of Jewish children in hiding places.
[4] He was subsequently sent to the island of Flores in Indonesia as a missionary, where he taught at the seminaries of Todabelu/Mataloko in Ngada Regency and in Ritapiret near Maumere and intermittently lived there for some 15 years.
This was a major surprise, as larger land mammals like the rhinoceros and elephant were not expected to have crossed the deep waters of the Wallace Line.
[5] In 1957 he discovered the first stegondontid fossils reported from Ola Bula in Flores, along with Lower Palaeolithic stone blades and flakes.
[7] Also in 1965, he found much younger (neolithic) human graves, stone tools and Paulamys naso fossils in the Liang Bua cave.