Word: australopithecus
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...Dart uncovered a small, fragmentary skull with the face almost intact. The scientist quickly realized that he had in his hands one of the most important evolutionary finds since the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus, the ape-man of Java. Geological evidence indicated that the skull, whose owner was christened Australopithecus, was 500,000 to 1,000,000 years...
Much of the uncertainty over the status of Australopithecus was due to his extreme youth. He was not more than six years old when he died. The jaw contained 20 milk teeth, four permanent teeth. Dr. Dart placed him at the base of the human evolutionary stem. But Sir Arthur Keith, while admitting certain manlike features, put him on the same branch with gorillas and chimpanzees, though on a separate twig. After several years the lower jaw was detached from the upper, and the crowns of the milk teeth were seen to be almost wholly human in form. Dr. William...
...South African evidence is the fossilized skull of a six-year-old beast. Professor Raymond Arthur Dart of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, found the skull five years ago at Taungs, Bechuanaland, near the west border of the Transvaal. He calls it Australopithecus (Southern...
...higher. His milk teeth, brain and temple bones are closer to the human type than the ape. So Professor Dart boldly reasons that he belonged to a family intermediate between the higher apes and man, was in a way cousin to both. Professor Dart is now looking for an Australopithecus hind foot. If it is more human-like than apelike he will be reasonably certain that the Taung-creature was a late stage in man's evolution...