Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
which would occur six years later, he stated, “The evolution of the limb
structure proceeded at a more rapid rate than that of the brain.”
66
Clearly, by 1947 the tide was turning. How sweet it must have been
for Dart to read Sir Arthur Keith's words in
Nature
that year: “When
professor Dart of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
announced in
Nature
the discovery of a juvenile
Australopithecus
and
claimed for it a human kinship, I was one of those who took the point of
view that when the adult form was discovered it would prove to be nearer
akin to the living African anthropoids—the gorilla and chimpanzee. . . .
I am now convinced of the evidence submitted by Dr. Robert Broom
that Professor Dart was right and I was wrong. The Australopithecinae
are in or near the line which culminated in the human form. . . . I have
ventured . . . to call them by the colloquial name of Dartians. . . . The
Dartians are ground-living anthropoids, human in posture, gait and den-
later described Keith's letter as “magnanimous.”
68
Although Dart's depiction of
Australopithecus
as “terrestrial, troglo-
dytic and predacous
[sic]
in habit—a cave-dwelling, plains-frequent-
ing, stream-searching, bird-nest-rifling and bone-cracking ape, who
employed destructive implements in the chase and preparation of his
carnivorous diet” has not met with universal acceptance, his interpre-
tation of Taung's body build, bipedal movement, and hominin status
have been discovered from numerous sites in South, East, and Central
Africa. Dated between roughly 5 million and 1 million years of age, these
specimens represent many hundreds of individuals and an increasing
number of species. Contemporary scientists believe that the ancestors
that gave rise to our own genus,
Homo,
originated somewhere among
the less robust australopithecines like Taung (i.e., from
Australopithecus
rather than
Paranthropus
).
Although Dart had declined to donate Taung to the university soon
after it was discovered, he willed the fossil to Wits in 1979. Dart died
