OH 5
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| Catalog no. | OH 5 |
|---|---|
| Common name | Zinj or Nutcracker Man |
| Species | Paranthropus boisei |
| Age | 1.75 mya |
| Place discovered | Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania |
| Date discovered | July 17, 1959 |
| Discovered by | Mary Leakey |
 Zinj on display at the National Museum of Tanzania. |
OH 5 (Olduvai Hominid number 5, also known as Zinjanthropus or "Nutcracker Man"; colloquially as "Dear Boy") is a fossilized cranium and the holotype of the species Paranthropus boisei. It was discovered in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, by archaeologist-paleontologist Mary Leakey in 1959.
Her husband and fellow scientist Louis Leakey initially classified the hominid as Zinjanthropus boisei and thought that it was an early ancestor of modern humans that lived approximately 2 million years ago. However, this contention was later withdrawn because of its robust australopithecine features and the discovery of Homo habilis soon thereafter.
Mary and Louis Leakey had conducted excavations in Tanzania since the 1930s, though most such work was postponed due to the outbreak of World War II. They returned in 1951, finding mostly ancient tools and fossils of extinct mammals for the next few years. On the morning of July 17, 1959, Louis felt ill and stayed at camp while Mary went out to Bed I's Frida Leakey Korongo (korongo is Swahili for gully; this one was named after Louis's ex-wife). Sometime around 11:00 a.m., she noticed a piece of bone that "seemed to be part of a skull" which had a "hominid look".
After dusting some topsoil away and finding "two large teeth set in the curve of a jaw", she drove back to camp exclaiming "I've got him!" They created a pile of stones around the exposed portion of the fossil to protect it from the weather. Active excavation began the following day; they had chosen to wait for photographer Des Bartlett to arrive so that a photographic record of the entire process of removal could be made. A partial cranium was fully unearthed August 6, though it had to be reconstructed from its fragments which were scattered in the scree.
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