Word: sterkfontein
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...what they evolved into--those that weren't evolutionary dead ends--has proved elusive. Not only is the fossil record full of holes, but the hominid species from eastern Africa haven't shown up in southern Africa, and vice versa. A remarkably preserved skeleton found in South Africa's Sterkfontein cave could change all that. Believed to be at least 3.3 million years old, the bones may belong to A. afarensis, making it the first of Lucy's species uncovered in that area. But the skeleton hasn't been fully excavated yet, and its discoverer, Ron Clarke of the University...
...skull of an adult Australopithecus africanus was unearthed from a mine at Sterkfontein, in the Transvaal. From it, Robert Broom reconstructed a creature similar to the one found at Taung?an ape-man somewhat more than a meter (3 ft. 3 in.) in height, with upright posture and human-like teeth but a low forehead and a small brain. Two years later Broom uncovered a new type of the southern ape a mile away, at Kromdraai. The creature, later called Australopithecus robustus, was heavier and larger than the earlier South African finds, and had bigger teeth, set in a nutcracker...
Last week, world-famous anthropologists at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science listened with shock and bewilderment to the description of the anthropoid ape fossil which Dr. Robert Broom of the Transvaal Museum discovered in the South African Sterkfontein caves last fall. The ape, of the family Australopithecus transvaalensis, lived in the Pleistocene days, when Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus were already beating down lesser men. Since South Africa was treeless, Australopithecus must have walked on the ground. Whether it walked human-fashion is not known, since the bones of the lower leg have not been...
...those who agreed with Professor Dart from the first in placing Australopihecus "in or near the line by which man las arisen" was Dr. Robert Broom, paleontologist of the Transvaal Museum in retoria. Last July another blast in another limestone quarry, this time at Sterkfontein, turned up another fossil brain case. The manager, urged by Dr. Broom to keep his eyes peeled for a Taungs ape, landed this to the scientist. Feverish earch disclosed the upper face, the skull base, the right jawbone with three teeth, a detached molar. Last week in Nature appeared a letter from Dr. Broom describing...
...Broom's joy the Sterkfontein skull was that of an adult, with fairly heavy brow ridges and a brain capacity of about 600 cc. He found some resemblances to the Taungs skull and some differences, therefore put his fossil in the same genus with Australopithecus but in a different species. Name: Australopithecus transvaalensis Broom. One molar which he was able to examine closely showed close affinities to Dryopithecus, a well-known genus of extinct apes. It is from a generalized type of Dryopithecus that most anthropologists believe man evolved...
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