Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
America admitted the
possibility
of the remains belonging to a transition
form between man and the apes.”
19
Scientists were also critical because Dubois had not compared the
remains with those from Neanderthals when he wrote his monograph,
largely because he did not have access to adequate comparative mate-
rial in Indonesia. Dart later met with similar criticism from anonymous
reviewers of his unpublished monograph, because he had not compared
Taung with an adequate sample of apes, which was unavailable in South
Africa at the time. As would happen with Dart, after much scientific
wrangling and the discovery of many additional specimens, Dubois's
the person who discovered the first
Homo erectus
remains.
The controversial receptions to missing links on the part of scientists
have been exacerbated by the surprising locations in which the fos-
sils were discovered, as well as by their unusual mixtures of physical
features. At the time
Pithecanthropus
was discovered, ancient hominin
remains (notably Neanderthals) had been recovered only from Europe,
and Charles Darwin's suggestion that humans first originated in Africa
the cradle of mankind therefore violated contemporary scientific expec-
tations. Dart's announcement some 30 years later that Africa was the
cradle of humanity was equally disconcerting, because, by then, Dubois's
Asia-centered view had become accepted. Taung also violated scientific
expectations of how a missing link should look, because its small brain
and humanlike jaw were the opposite of another (presumably) early
Pleistocene hominin, Piltdown Man, which had not yet been disclosed as
prising Indonesian location and strange combination of features of
Homo
floresiensis
suggest that this new species may be destined to cause another
major upheaval in our understanding of hominin evolution.
Endocasts contributed significant information to the analyses of
Pithe-
canthropus,
Taung, and LB1. In Dart's case, Taung's skull was associated
