In 1910 in London, he married Gertrude Clunies-Ross, the fourth daughter of
George Clunies-Ross.[10] She was subsequently a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and only the second woman to be the society's librarian.[11]
Tarsian hypothesis
"Wood Jones, prior to the 1930s, promoted that the human line evolved from a very generalized primate from which avoided going through a hominoid ape stage. His tradition of interpretation... the human line avoided altogether the hominoid phase of evolution... [common] ancestor was conceived to be tarsoid-like form... the rise of the bipedal posture in humans was not believed to have been preceded by a brachiation or a pre-brachiation phase."[12]
Jones favoured a long separate, non-anthropoid ancestry for humans. He believed that science should search as far back as the primitive
tarsioid stock to find a sufficiently generalised form that would be the common ancestor of man, monkeys and the
anthropoid apes. The tarsian hypothesis of Jones, which he held to from 1918[13] until his death, claimed that the human line of development did not diverge from that of
apes or
monkeys but from much earlier, before the
Oligocene 30 million years ago, from a
common ancestor with a primitive primate group of which the only other survivor is the
Tarsier.[14] Wood Jones in his The Ancestry Of Man (1923) described his Tarsian hypothesis as follows:
"The thesis then put forward was that the general notion that Man had evolved along the line of the Linnean Classification was wrong. Far from the Lemurs, the Monkeys, and the Anthropoid Apes being landmarks upon the line of human progress, it was contended that the human stock arose from a Tarsioid form, that the Lemurs were not ancestors of the Tarsioids and that the Monkeys and Apes were more specialised away from the Tarsioids than was Man himself, and, therefore, were not his ancestors, but rather his collateral descendants from a former assemblage of animals, of which we have only one direct living descendant, in the form of Tarsius spectrum."
Wood Jones explained common structural features between Man and the apes (and monkeys) through
convergent evolution. In 1948 he wrote:
"If the primate forms immediately ancestral to the human stock are ever to be revealed, they will be utterly unlike the slouching ‘ape men’ of which some have dreamed and of which they have made casts and pictures during their waking hours."[15]
Philosophy
Jones rejected organised religion and idea of an anthropomorphic
deity. He believed there was a
cosmic mind behind nature. He defended the
holistic philosophy of
Jan Smuts and was a strong critic of
Darwinism. His philosophical views are discussed in his book Design and Purpose (1942).[16][17]
Publications
As well as numerous scientific papers, books he authored, coauthored and edited include:
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1912). Coral and Atolls. A History and Description of the Keeling-Cocos Islands, with an account of their Fauna and Flora, and a Discussion of the Method of Development and Transformation of Coral Structures in General. Lovell, Reeve & Co Ltd: London.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1916). Arboreal Man. Edward Arnold: London.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1920). The Principles of Anatomy as Seen in the Hand. J. & A. Churchill: London.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1923). The Ancestry Of Man. Douglas Price Memorial Lecture, No.3. R G. Gilles & Co.: Brisbane.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1923). The Position of Anatomy in the Modern Medical Curriculum and the Conception of Cytoclesis. Hassell Press: Adelaide.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1923–25). The Mammals of South Australia. Parts I-III. Handbooks of the Flora and Fauna of South Australia. Government Printer: Adelaide.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1925). Unscientific Essays. Edward Arnold & Co: London.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1929). Man's Place Among the Mammals. Edward Arnold: London.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1934). Sea Birds Simplified. Edward Arnold & Co.: London.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1934). Unscientific Excursions. Edward Arnold & Co: London.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1939). Life and Living. Kegan Paul: London.
Jones, Frederic Wood. (1942). Design and Purpose. Kegan Paul: London.
^Delisle, R. G. (2007). Debating humankind's place in nature, 1860-2000: the nature of paleoanthropology. Prentice Hall. p. 185.
^Wood Jones proposed the Tarsian hypothesis on the 27th Feb. 1918 at a lecture entitled "The Origin of Man" at King's College, London, later published in Animal life and human progress (1919). ed. A. Dendy, Constable, London. Wood Jones followed with the booklet The Problem of Man's Ancestry (1919) discussing his theory the same year, followed by three other books defending the theory: The Ancestry Of Man (1923), Man's Place Among the Mammals (1929) and Hallmarks of Mankind (1948).
^Information, Reed Business (3 July 1958).
"New Scientist". Reed Business Information. Retrieved 10 November 2017 – via Google Books. {{
cite web}}: |first= has generic name (
help)
^Hallmarks of Mankind. (1948). London: Bailliere Tindall and Cox. p. 86.
^Bowler, Peter J. (2001). Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain. University of Chicago Press. p. 146