Anthropologist Phillip Tobias dies

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Anthropologist Phillip Tobias, internationally renowned as an authority on human evolution and remembered for his love of humanity, died Thursday, South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand said. He was 86.

The university said Tobias' name was synonymous with research at the Sterkfontein caves near Johannesburg where an ape-man's skeleton -- millions of years old -- known as Little Foot was discovered. The area, now a World Heritage site, is where over a third of all known early hominid fossils have been found.

In 1986, during a period that saw clashes between anti-apartheid activists and the white racist government's security forces that some historians have compared to civil war, Tobias spoke at a university meeting that drew thousands of students and staff members. He and others urged the government to free detainees and end a state of emergency that gave it broad powers to crack down on protests and dissent.

In a statement, South African President Jacob Zuma lauded Tobias for leading the nation's efforts to reclaim the remains of Saartjie Bartmann, a South African slave who was taken to Europe and displayed in life and death as an ethnological curiosity in the 19th century. -- AP