Raymond Arthur Dart (4 February 1893 – 22 November 1988) was an Australian anatomist and anthropologist, best known for his involvement in the 1924 discovery of the first fossil found of Australopithecus africanus, an extinct hominin closely related to humans, at Taung in the North of South Africa in the Northwest province. He also did extensive work on physical anthropology in the tradition of scientific racism.
Early life Raymond Dart was born in Toowong, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, the fifth of nine children and son of a farmer and tradesman. His birth occurred during the 1893 flood, which filled his parents' home and shop in Toowong. The family moved alternately between their country property near Laidley and their shop in Toowong. The young Dart attended Toowong State School, Blenheim State School and earned a scholarship to Ipswich Grammar School from 1906 to 1909. Dart considered becoming a medical missionary to China and wished to study medicine at the University of Sydney, but his father argued that he should accept the scholarship he won to the newly established University of Queensland and study science. He was a member of the first intake of students to the university in 1911 and studied geology under H.C. Richards and zoology, taking his BSc in 1913. Dart became the first student to graduate with honours from the University of Queensland in 1914 and took his MSc with honours from UQ in 1916. He studied medicine at the University of Sydney taking his MB and M.Surgery in 1917, and conducting his residency at St Andrews College, University of Sydney. He was awarded his M.D. from the University of Sydney in 1927. Dart served as a captain and medic in the Australian Army in England and France during the last year of World War I. Following the war, he took up a position as a senior demonstrator at the University College, London in 1920 at the behest of Grafton Elliot Smith, famed anatomist, anthropologist and fellow Australian. This was followed by a year on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. Returning to England and work at the University College, London, he reluctantly took up the position of Professor at the newly established department of anatomy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1922, after encouragement from Elliot Smith and Sir Arthur Keith.
Career
Paleoanthropology and the discovery of Australopithecus
Dart is commonly credited with discovering the first Australopithecus africanus fossil in 1924, an extinct hominin closely related to humans. In reality, there have been diverging narratives about the discovery of the fossilised skull, and Dart's memoir states clearly that he did not actually discover it. His colleague, Professor Robert Burns Young from the Buxton Limeworks, had sent Dart two crates of fossils from the small town of Taung in the North West Province of South Africa. Upon seeing the fossils, Dart immediately recognised one as being an early human because its brain dimensions were too large for a baboon or chimpanzee. Blasting had exposed a breccia-filled cave and the child's skull had come to light together with several fossilised monkeys and hyraxes. M. de Bruyn had noticed their unusual nature in November 1924 and informed the Limeworks manager, Mr. A.E. Spiers. Later, in his 1959 memoirs, Dart acknowledged the crucial role played by his first female student and demonstrator, Josephine Salmons, in identifying the importance of the fossil which was to become known as the Taung Child. She brought to his attention the existence of a fossilised baboon skull at the house of Edwin Gilbert Izod, director of the Northern Lime Company and proprietor of a quarry in Taung. The skull was kept as an ornament on the mantlepiece above the fireplace at his home. In bringing the skull to show Dart, she set in motion a chain of events that led to the discovery of the "child skull of Taung". In 1925, Dart published an article in Nature in which he presented the species as Australopithecus africanus, the "southern ape from Africa", and claimed that the fossil was an indication that early hominins had lived in Africa. As Dart was not part of the scientific establishment, and because the fossil was found in Africa, and not Europe or Asia, where the establishment supposed man's origins, his findings were initially dismissed. Dart's closest ally was Robert Broom whose discoveries of further Australopithecines (as well as Wilfrid Le Gros Clark's support) eventually vindicated Dart, so much so that in 1947 Sir Arthur Keith said "...Dart was right, and I was wrong". Keith made this statement referring to his dismissal and scepticism of Dart's analysis of the Taung Child as an early human ancestor; Keith thought that it was more likely to be an ape, yet later research by Broom confirmed Dart's theories. Dart's theories were also popularised by playwright, screenwriter, and science writer Robert Ardrey, first in an article published in The Reporter and reprinted in Science Digest, and later in Ardrey's influential four-book Nature of Man Series, which began in 1961 with African Genesis. Not all of Dart's theories would in the end be vindicated. A number of his theories, including that of the killer ape, have been refuted. However, some of his ideas retain support. His work was clearly influenced by the mentors he worked with in his early career, in particular Grafton Elliot Smith.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
