Frederick William FitzSimons

Who was Frederick William FitzSimons?

Frederick William FitzSimons, was a South African naturalist noted for his research on the country's snakes and their venom, and the commercial production of anti-venom.

FitzSimons emigrated to South Africa in 1881 and was educated in Natal. He was appointed curator of the Pietermaritzburg Museum in 1897 from where he transferred to the Natal Government Museum. In 1906 he moved once more to the Port Elizabeth Museum as director. In 1918 he founded Africa's first snake-park there, which was also the world's second.

Of great interest at the time, his 1913 examination of and report on hominid skull fragments originating from Boskop near Potchefstroom, led to a flurry of speculation.

Robert Broom wrote:

Subsequently many similar skulls were unearthed by prominent palaeontologists of the day, including Robert Broom, Alexander Galloway, William Pycraft, Sidney Haughton, Raymond Dart, and others. The current view is that Boskop Man was not a species, but a variation of anatomically modern humans; there are well-studied skulls from Boskop, South Africa, as well as from Skuhl, Qazeh, Fish Hoek, Border Cave, Brno, Tuinplaas, and other locations.