Word: australopithecus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...decade the mammoth limestone caves of the Makapansgat Valley in South Africa (TIME, June 20, 1955) have been yielding the bones and implements of a remarkably human creature known to anthropologists as Australopithecus prometheus (African...
Most likely candidate as proprietor of the pebble culture was Australopithecus prometheus, a smallish, erect-walking creature whose brain was just big enough to equip him intellectually as a maker of tools. Prometheus was plentiful in the Makapan region, but his remains had never been found with pebble tools...
...finds came from a cave whose mouth is now 160 ft. above the Makapan River in the Transvaal. The cave's original floor is travertine rock, on which lies more than 50 ft. of sedimentary material. In one of the layers, close to the floor, are bones of Australopithecus prometheus, a small, spry primate whom Professor Dart considers at least semi-human. Prometheus, he says, ate baboons, may have stood upright and may have possessed fire. On the other hand, apparently, he did not know how to make stone tools or weapons...
...theory that man originated in Africa got a boost when a nearly complete lower jaw of Australopithecus prometheus was found at Makapansgat in the Transvaal this month. Anthropologists now have most of the skull parts (from different individuals) of a "proto-man" who probably lived one million years ago, along with saber-toothed tigers and giant hyenas. Professor Raymond A. Dart of Witwatersrand University gave Prometheus his name because some of his bones contained free carbon, which indicates that they had been burned, and hints at the use of fire...