Palaeoanatomist Philip Tobias examining part of the skull of Homo habilis, using a magnifying glass. Homo habilis was the name given by Louis Leakey, John Napier & Philip Tobias to a collection of hominid fossils which were excavated from 1.7 million-year-old deposits at Olduvai Gorge, in north Tanzania, during 1960. Leakey et al believed that the Olduvai fossils were the remains of a creature who represented an intermediary stage of hominid evolution - the Missing Link. At this time there were two other candidates: Australopithecus africanus & Homo erectus. Homo habilis was fitted nicely into the space that separated these two species.