All things bleak and bare beneath a brazen sky: practice and place in the analysis of Australopithecus

Madison, Paige

doi:10.1007/s40656-019-0258-x

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…As one of us has argued, these complaints speak to the importance of Dart's refusal to send the specimen to an imperial, metropolitan center for analysis. Breaking from established paleontological practice, this refusal raised practical difficulties that shaped interpretations, as Dart did not have access to comparative collections, such as the ape skeletal collection at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London 16 . The lack of geological evidence put forward in Dart's paper was another objection shared by the commentators, with Keith claiming that such evidence will “help settle its relationships” 13 .…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Birth of Australopithecus

Madison

Wood

2021

Evolutionary Anthropology

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The announcement of a fossilized child's skull discovered in a quarry in 1924 sub‐Saharan Africa might not have seemed destined to be a classic paper. This contribution focuses on anatomist Raymond Dart's 1925 paper in which he designated the Taungs skull the type specimen of Australopithecus africanus. We combine an account of Dart's training and experience, with a telling of the fossil's discovery, analysis, the initial response of a mostly skeptical community, and a review of subsequent discoveries that consolidated the case Dart made for a hitherto unknown human close relative. Dart's paper presented evidence that confirmed the prescience of Charles Darwin's prediction that Africa was the birthplace of modern humans. The Taungs skull's unique mix of great ape and human attributes eventually led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of human evolution.

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%