Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3. An early photograph of Raymond Dart with the Taung fossil.
Photograph courtesy of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
South Africa; photographer unknown.
not be attributed to the specimen's youth, because brains grow to nearly
their adult size within the first few years of life.
Although Dart had uncovered a clear candidate for a missing link
in human evolution, he carefully avoided that term in the report he
fervently prepared for
Nature
at the end of 1924. Taking a conservative
approach, he decided to describe the fossil as a “man-ape” rather than
an “ape-man,” which was used to describe the relatively advanced and
more recent remains of
Pithecanthropus erectus
that had been discovered
coveries had been primitive men like Neanderthal Man . . . and the still
more primitive Java Man
(Pithecanthropus).
They had been proved to be
men with apelike features.
Australopithecus
was the reverse—an ape with
