Raymond Dart
Raymond Arthur Dart (born February 4, 1893 &ndash died November 22, 1988) was an Australian anatomist and anthropologist best known for his discovery in 1924 of a fossil of Australopithecus at Taung, in Northwestern South Africa.
Life
Raymond Dart was born in Toowong, Brisbane, Australia into a family of farmers. He was the fifth of nine children. After getting a scholarship and attending the Ipswich Grammar School at the University of Queensland in Brisbane - where he showed his great intelligence by winning several prizes - he continued to study medicine at the University of Sydney. After graduation, and in the middle of the World War I, Dart decided to go to England to serve in medical corps. Then in 1920 he enrolled at the University of London to study anatomy.
At the University of London Dart became an assistant of Grafton Elliot Smith, one of the world’s most famous neuroanatomists. Darn built a reputation being the Smith’s brightest students. In 1922 he, however, accepted a position as head of the newly established department of anatomy at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dart worked hard to organize the department from scratches.
In 1924 Dart excavated fossil bones of what later will be known as the Taung baby. He named it Australopithecus africanus, or Southern ape from Africa, in an article in Nature which described his finds. The discovery was initially praised in scientific community as a missing link between apes and humans, but later it was rejected as an ape. In 1930 Dart traveled to London to defend his position, but found little understanding. The discovery of Piltdown man and, later Peking men shifted focus from Taung Child.
Dart returned to Witwaterrand and continued to focus on his work in anatomy department. He served there as a Dean from 1925 to 1943. In mid 1940s Dart started excavations again, at Makapansgat. He found numerous blackened bones that indicated the possibility the Australopithecus knowledge of fire-making. Dart named the species Australopithecus prometheus. Analyzing their jaw and skeleton, he claimed that they were fierce savage hunters, whose inheritance we all feel today in violent human behavior. Even though those claims were dismissed later by modern scientists, the myth of “killer ape” was perpetuated and popularized through books (e.g. African Genesis by R. Ardrey) and movies (e.g. 2001: Space Odyssey). In late 1940s scientists accepted the hominid nature of Australopithecus, such saving Dart’s name from oblivion.
Dart continued to teach at the University of Johannesburg until 1958. He married twice and had two children. He died 1988 at the age of 95.
Work
Besides his work in the Anatomy department at the University of Johannesburg, one of Dart’s main contribution to science was his discovery of Taung child.
Taung Child refers to the fossil of a skull specimen of Australopithecus africanus. It was discovered in 1924 by quarryman working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, South Africa. Dart immediately recognized its importance and published his discovery in the journal Nature in 1925, describing it as a new species. The scientific community was very interesting for this find at the beginning, Unfortunately, the British establishment later got tangled with the hoax Piltdown man, which had a large brain and ape-like teeth - the exact opposite of the Taung Child - and Dart's finding was not appreciated for decades. Dart's discovery and Dart himself came under heavily criticism by the eminent anthropologists of the day, most notably Sir Arthur Keith who claimed the Taung Child to be nothing other than a juvenile gorilla. Because the specimen was indeed a juvenile, there was a lot of room for interpretation, and because African origins for mankind and the development of bipedalism before a human-like brain were both inconsistent with the prevailing evolutionary notions of the time, Dart and his Child became the butt of many attacks.
Taung Child is believed to have been a three-year-old being at the time of its death 2.5 million years ago. It was a creature standing 3' 6" at approximately 75 pounds. It had a cranial capacity of 340cc, living mainly in a savanna habitat. Examinations of Taung Child compared to that of an equivalent 9-year-old child suggest that Australopithecus africanus had a growth rate more similar to modern apes than to modern Homo sapiens. However intermediate species such as Homo ergaster/Homo erectus are thought to have gone through growths intermediate between modern humans and apes. The evidence has mostly been based on that of Turkana Boy discovered in 1984.
Based on the examination of bones, Dart concluded that Australopithecus africanus could walk upright, and possibly use tools. The controversy arose around the usage of tools, where some claimed that Australopithecus used bones of antelopes and wild boars as tools, while others argued that those bones were only remains of food Australopithecus ate.
When in late 1940s Robert Broom and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark discovered further australopithecines, support eventually vindicated Dart. So much so that in 1947, Sir Arthur Keith said "...Dart was right, and I was wrong."
In early 2006 it was announced [1] that the Taung Child was likely killed by an eagle, or similar large predatory bird. This conclusion was reached by noting similarities in the damage to the skull and eye sockets of the Taung Child to the skulls of primates known to have been killed by modern eagles.
The skull is now (as of 2006) exhibited at the Maropeng visitor's center at the Cradle of Humankind in Gauteng, South Africa.
Legacy
The significance of Dart’s work lies in the fact that Toung Child was the first of the fossils which had been found to prove that the human race does indeed have a 'natural history' all of its own - just as Darwin had predicted. This does not mean the same as accepting Darwinism for an explanation of the relationship between the australopithecines and the hominids - which Darwin never offered - but it does lay down the timeline and the factual basis for a discussion about our own ancestors which includes 'proto-culture' as one of the variables in such a 'reconstruction' of our collective past. Whether australopithecines are the direct ancestors of human line, or just our cousins on evolutionary scale, remains a mystery.
Phillip Tobias continued Dart’s work and has contributed to the study of Cradle of Humanity. The Institute for the Study of Man in Africa was founded at Witwatersrand in Dart’s honor.
Bibliography
- Dart Raymond A. (1925): Australopithecus africanus: The man-ape of South Africa. Nature, 115, 195-9
- Dart, Raymond A. & Craig, Dennis. (1959/1982). Adventures with the Missing Link. Better Baby Press. ISBN 0936676299
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Fagan, Brian. The Passion of Raymond Dart. Archaeology, 42, 18.
- Johanson, Donald & Maitland, Edey. (1990). Lucy: The Beginnings of Humandkind. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671724991
- Tattersall, Ian. (1997). The fossil trail: How we know what we think we know about human evolution. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195109813
- Wheelhouse, Frances. (2001). Dart: Scientist and man of grit. Hornsby, Australia: Transpareon Press. ISBN 0908021216
External links
Credits
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:
The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:
Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.
