Raymond Dart and the child of Taung

2010/10/01 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Paleontologia
• Biografiak
• Historia
• Arkeologia

The taxi driver observed that there was a box behind the taxi. A review of the clients that that day toured London. Who knows who left him. He decided to look at what was inside. The lid of the box fell from the hands when he saw the inside: A skull! He returned to the police.

Meanwhile, Dora Dart was distressed and worried about the forgotten box in the taxi. She could not believe that her husband's treasure was lost like this. He knew well how important it was for Raymond.

That skull recalled the day she arrived at the hands of her husband. It was a year after traveling to South Africa, a Saturday afternoon of 1924. They were preparing to attend the wedding of a friend, godfather Raymond. And he was still half dressed when two boxes of fossils arrived.

Raymond Dart was an anatomist who was trying to make an anatomy museum in his department at Wits University in Johannesburg. The fossil babuino-skull that were appearing in a lime quarry in Taung could be an exceptional material for the museum. The two boxes that came from there. Unable to maintain curiosity, he stopped dressing and went to look at the contents of the boxes.

"I felt chilling -- I would write years later in his book Adventures with the Missing Link. On the heap of stones was the inner mold of a skull. Although the fossilized form of the brain of any monkey would have been a great discovery, it was never found. But at first glance I discovered that what was in my hands was not a current anthropoid brain. That brain replica was three times greater than that of a baboon, and much greater than that of an adult chimpanzee. The circumvalations, stretch marks and blood vessels of the brain were perfectly seen."

And if the inner mold of the skull was there, not even the skull was going far. Dart started undressing in the box and found a large stone with a sargune that fit perfectly with the mold. "In the stone one could appreciate part of the skull and part of the lower gag... I was sure he was one of the great discoveries of the history of anthropology. I came to mind Darwin's theory that man's ancestors were from Africa, rejected at that time. Did I find your "lost link"? ".

"Those sweet dreams interrupted a revolutionary boyfriend who was throwing my sleeve: 'My God, Ray! Get on immediately or need to find another godfather! The car is about to arrive! '. Before going to the wedding I kept in the closet the mold and the stone with skull".

During the following three months, he dedicated all his free time to gradually undo the stone with his wife's needles to release the skull. It ended two days after Christmas. The face of a child appeared, with all his milk teeth, while his teeth were being removed. "I do not think that at that Christmas of 1924 there were parents, more proud of their children than of my son of Taung," he wrote.

He soon announced his discovery in the journal Nature. He noted that his skull, teeth, and jaws were more humanoid than apes, and that he was undoubtedly a small brain hominid, never described above. In addition, he wrote that the fact that the magnum of the foramas (zone of union of the skull with the spine or hole) was advanced made it clear that the hominid walked standing. Called Australopithecus africanus, South African monkey, he added that the origin of the human being was Africa clear evidence.

But in Europe it did not have good reception. On the one hand, Dart was a mere amateur, as the mixture of Greek and Latin on behalf of Australopithecus made clear, and he wanted to do it all on his own, without consulting anything with true experts. But above all it was against all the convictions of the time. According to the few fossils found until then in Europe and Asia, Eurasia was the cradle of man.

In addition, the man of Piltdown, discovered in England in 1912, showed that the ancestor of man was to have a large brain and some physical characteristics of the monkeys (later it was clarified that it was a fraud with the skull of a human being and the gag of an orangutan). And with the child of Taung he passed the opposite.

Thus, in Europe they were considered as remnants of some kind of monkey, and no more attention was paid to them. In 1931, even when the Dart couple traveled to England with skull, they failed to improve the situation. And, moreover, the skull was in danger of getting lost, forgotten in the taxi.

Skull recovery in police station. But Dart returned so desolate to South Africa that he abandoned anthropology for years.

Forgotten of the child of Taung, a day of work in the university laboratory, a man entered the ramp. Ignoring no one, he went directly to the place where the skull was. He took his hands and kneeled down, "for adoration toward our ancestor." It was Robert Broom, a doctor and paleontologist of Scottish origin. Ever since he learned of Te's discovery, he was his great defender. He even decided to search for more australopitecos.

The search for Broom was successful: In 1936 he found the skull of an adult of australopite. And many more in the coming years. Reinforced by the discoveries of Broom, Dada himself resumed the search for fossils. And he also found more australopitecos.

Little by little, the rest of anthropologists began to recognize that Dart worked properly. Especially after the monograph on the australopithals written by Broom in 1946. From behind came more discoveries in favor. And in 1984 the journal Science included the discovery of Darte among the 20 most important discoveries of the century. Darte was 91 years old.