1 Introduction The Late Miocene and Early Pliocene hominin fossil record conirms Africa as the birthplace of humanity. Raymond Dart’s announcement of the irst species of ‘ape-man’ in the journal Nature (Dart, 1925) forever changed our percep- tions of Africa’s place in the ‘human story’ and irmly established the ield of African palaeoanthropology. We palaeoanthropologists, past, present and future, owe a signiicant debt to Dart’s discovery and his recognition of its importance. But Dart’s work was just the beginning of a long and proud leg- acy of excavation and research in southern Africa, and new discoveries con- tinue to conirm the importance of this region to our understanding of human evolution. The African Genesis symposium, held at the University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Johannesburg, South Africa between 8 and 14 January 2006, celebrated the 80th anniversary of Dart’s publication of the Taung child and the 80th birthday of a remarkable man, Professor Phillip V. Tobias. Tobias continued the tradition established by his mentor Dart, and his mentor before him: a long line of mentors and students stretching back more than 500 years (Ungar and Tobias, Chapter 2). Tobias, in turn, continues to collaborate with colleagues and former students on a variety of new perspectives on the fossil hominin material (e.g. Lockwood and Tobias, 2002; Holloway et al., 2004; Curnoe and Tobias, 2006; Moggi-Cecci et al., 2006). His commitment to edu- cation and scientiic rigour established a strong foundation for our scholarly community. Phillip Tobias’s contributions encompass the systematic study of all aspects of human evolution and he continues to inspire students and colleagues world- wide. In his role of palaeoanthropologist, he described new fossil discoveries (Leakey et al., 1964; Hughes and Tobias, 1977), headed the excavation pro- gramme at Sterkfontein for many years and studied deposits of Sterkfontein, 1 African Genesis: an evolving paradigm Sally C. Reynolds African Genesis: Perspectives on Hominin Evolution, eds. Sally C. Reynolds and Andrew Gallagher. Published by Cambridge University Press. © Cambridge University Press 2012.