Underappreciated pioneers

Carline, Kristin; Kunitz, Suzanne; Wood, Bernard

doi:10.1002/evan.21945

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 17 publications

(27 reference statements)

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“…[ 58 – 60 ]). Howell was also the primary architect behind the rise of interdisciplinary palaeoanthropology—something that arguably had been pioneered by Dorothy Garrod decades earlier [ 61 ]. Howell’s co-organization of a Wenner–Gren symposium on ‘African Ecology and Human Evolution’ in 1961, and his involvement in the edited volume that followed 2 years later [ 62 ] was crucial, as was his leading role in setting the research agenda of the International Omo Research Expedition (IORE), a multinational field campaign undertaken in the late 1960s and early 1970s that focused on the Plio-Pleistocene fossil deposits of the lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia.…”

Section: Taung and The Environments Of Early Human Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dart and the Taung juvenile: making sense of a century-old record of hominin evolution in Africa

Rowan,

Wood

2024

Biol. Lett.

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The announcement in 1925 by Raymond Dart of the discovery of the Taung juvenile’s skull in a quarry in sub-Saharan Africa is deservedly a classic publication in the history of palaeoanthropology. Dart’s paper—which designated Taung as the type specimen of the early hominin species Australopithecus africanus —provided the first fossil evidence supporting Charles Darwin’s 1871 prediction that Africa was where the human lineage originated. The Taung juvenile’s combination of ape and human characteristics eventually led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of human evolution. This contribution focuses on the milieu in which Dart’s paper appeared (i.e. what was understood in 1925 about human evolution), the fossil evidence as set out by Dart, his interpretation of how a species represented by a fossilized juvenile’s skull fitted within prevailing narratives about human evolution and the significance of the fossil being found in an environment inferred to be very different from that occupied by living apes. We also briefly review subsequent fossil finds that have corroborated the argument Dart made for having discovered evidence of a hitherto unknown close relative of humans, and summarize our current understanding of the earliest stages of human evolution and its environmental context.

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Section: Taung and The Environments Of Early Human Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%