In fact, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), in his
Descent of Man (1873), had hypothesized that Africa would prove the cradle of man, but he was ignored. Dart was a young professor of anatomy at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Some interesting primate fossils had been discovered by workers in a limestone quarry in the nearby region of Taung, and Dart arranged to have them sent to him. In a box of these fossils Dart noticed the broken remains of a tiny skull that was neither a baboon nor other known primate. Over time he pieced the fragments together to reveal the skull of a child. He dubbed the diminutive relic
Australopithecus africanus (the South African Ape) and decided it was an intermediate stage between anthropoids (monkeys) and man.
Dart published a description of the fossil shortly thereafter, but few scientists seemed interested in what Dart thought to be the earliest known human ancestor ever found. Those who were interested found it so because it suggested that the primates had ventured much further south during their evolution than previously thought. They did not think it a human ancestor, however. Dart argued that it was a human ancestor because the Foramen Magnum—the hole in the skull that the spinal cord passes through—was in the bottom like a human, not in the back like a primate.
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