Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
two
Circumstances thrust anthropology upon me after I had
chosen to follow even more useless trails as a neurological
embryologist.
Raymond Dart
Not one to dwell upon life's disappointments, Dart began improving the
abysmal conditions in the Department of Anatomy at Wits as soon as
he and Dora had settled in Johannesburg. In order to assemble an anat-
omy museum with bones and fossils of various animals, Dart offered a
prize of five pounds to the student who collected the most interesting
specimens during the July 1924 vacation. Although the students did not
award the prize to the most avid collector, Josephine Salmons, she later
brought Dart a rare monkey fossil that ultimately led to a much richer
prize. The little baboon skull had been blasted from a limestone site at
Taungs (now called Taung), in the northern Transvaal region of South
Africa. Eventually, it fell into the hands of the director of the Northern
Lime Company, Mr. Izod, who took it home. When Salmons happened
to see the fossil, she asked if she could borrow it to show her professor.
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Dart was excited by the little skull, because it appeared to be from an
unrecognized primitive species. Within minutes of Salmons' visit, Dart
recalled, he was careening down the hill in his Model-T Ford to discuss
had work scheduled near the Northern Lime Company, he agreed to
drop by to request that other bone-bearing rocks and fossils be sent to
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