Word: australopithecus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
...current American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Anthropologist Raymond Arthur Dart, of Johannesburg, gives the Transvaal pygmies their biggest boost up the evolutionary ladder. At one time, Dart had called them Australopithecus (southern ape). Now he wishes that he had named them Homunculus (little man). They appear to have been brainy beyond their size and times. Their brainpans (650 cc) were almost as big as those of their bigger (5 ft. 8 in.) contemporaries, the Men of Java...
...little man had learned to use fire. He lived in the early Ice Age, from 300,000 to 500,000 years before Peking Man, hitherto the earliest known user of fire. In honor of both his fire-bringing record and his prophetic skills, the new little man was named Australopithecus prometheus...