Short notes and reviews Eug. Dubois and punctuated evolution: letters to H. Engel

Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois (1858- 1940) became famous for the discovery of a scullcap (Fig. 1), some molars and a thigh-bone, that he named ‘the missing link’ (Java Man Pithecanthropus erectus, Dubois 1894), found during excavations at Trinil on the island of Java in the years 1891 and 1892. In 1887 Dubois decided to give up his promising career at the University of Amsterdam in order to do paleontological excavations in Indonesia, then ‘Nederlands-lndië’, in search of our forefathers (Theunissen, 1985). He entered the service of the ‘Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger’ as an officer of the Medical Board to provide maintenance for himself, his wife Anna and their new-born daughter (pers. comm. Dr Pat Shipman).