Joseph Birdsell; UCLA Anthropologist Studied Aborigines

Joseph B. Birdsell, 85, UCLA anthropologist who studied Australian aborigines. A native of South Bend, Ind., he earned his degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. Birdsell made his first field study in the Australian outback in 1938 and returned periodically to study microevolutionary processes. After teaching briefly at the State College of Washington, he served as an Army Air Corps officer in World War II. He taught anthropology at UCLA from 1948 until his retirement in 1974, continuing his research, and writing many articles and a widely used textbook on human evolution. His lifework was summarized in a monograph published last year by Oxford University Press. On March 5 in Santa Barbara of bone cancer.