Raymond Arthur Dart (4 February 1893 – 22 November 1988) was an Australian
anatomist
Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its ...
and
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
, best known for his involvement in the 1924 discovery of the first fossil ever found of ''
Australopithecus africanus
''Australopithecus africanus'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived between about 3.3 and 2.1 million years ago in the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of South Africa. The species has been recovered from Taung, Sterkfonte ...
'', an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
hominin
The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas).
The t ...
closely related to humans, at
Taung
Taung is a small town situated in the North West Province of South Africa. The name means ''place of the lion'' and was named after Tau, the King of the Barolong. ''Tau'' is the Tswana word for lion.
Education
High,Secondary and Middle Schools ...
in the North of
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
in the Northwest province.
Early life
Raymond Dart was born in
Toowong
Toowong is a riverside suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In the , Toowong had a population of 10,830 people.
Geography
Toowong is situated between Mount Coot-tha and the Brisbane River and is made up of rolling hills ...
, a suburb of
Brisbane, Queensland
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...
, 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
, motto_translation = Work and Honour
, address = Darling Street
, city = Ipswich
, state = Queensland
, postcode = 4305
, country = Australia
, coordinates =
, type = Independent, single-sex, day & boa ...
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
, mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work
, established =
, endowment = A$224.3 million
, budget = A$2.1 billion
, type = Public research university
, chancellor = Peter Varghese
, vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry
, city = B ...
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
Richards may refer to:
*Richards (surname)
In places:
* Richards, New South Wales, Australia
* Richards, Missouri, United States
* Richards, Texas, United States
In other uses:
* Richards (lunar crater)
Richards is a small lunar impact crate ...
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
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...
taking his MB and M.Surgery in 1917, and conducting his residency at St Andrews College, University of Sydney.
He would be 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
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
Following the war, he took up a position as a senior demonstrator at the
University College, London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = Â ...
in 1920 at the behest of
Grafton Elliot Smith
Sir Grafton Elliot Smith (15 August 1871 – 1 January 1937) was an Australian-British anatomist, Egyptologist and a proponent of the hyperdiffusionist view of prehistory. He believed in the idea that cultural innovations occur only once and ...
, famed anatomist, anthropologist and fellow Australian. This would be followed by a year on a
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...
Fellowship at
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...
.
Returning to England and work at the
University College, London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = Â ...
, he then reluctantly took up the position of Professor at the newly established department of
anatomy
Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its ...
at the
University of the Witwatersrand
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( o ...
in
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
in 1922, after encouragement from Elliot Smith and Sir Arthur Keith.
Career
In 1924, Dart discovered the first ''
Australopithecus africanus
''Australopithecus africanus'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived between about 3.3 and 2.1 million years ago in the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of South Africa. The species has been recovered from Taung, Sterkfonte ...
'' fossil, an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
hominin
The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas).
The t ...
closely related to humans. His colleague, Professor Robert Burns Young from the Buxton Limeworks, had sent Dart two crates of fossils from the small town of
Taung
Taung is a small town situated in the North West Province of South Africa. The name means ''place of the lion'' and was named after Tau, the King of the Barolong. ''Tau'' is the Tswana word for lion.
Education
High,Secondary and Middle Schools ...
in the
North West Province
North West is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Mahikeng. The province is located to the west of the major population centre of Gauteng and south of Botswana.
History
North West was incorporated after the end of Apartheid in 1994, an ...
of
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
. Upon seeing the fossils, Dart immediately recognized one as being an early human because its brain dimensions were too large for a baboon or chimpanzee. Blasting had exposed a
breccia
Breccia () is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or rocks cemented together by a fine-grained matrix.
The word has its origins in the Italian language, in which it means "rubble". A breccia may have a variety of di ...
-filled cave and the child's skull had come to light together with several fossilized monkeys and hyraxes. M. de Bruyn had noticed their unusual nature in November 1924 and informed the Limeworks manager, Mr. A.E. Spiers.
As Dart was not part of the scientific establishment, and because Raymond found the fossil 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
Robert Broom FRS FRSE (30 November 1866 6 April 1951) was a British- South African doctor and palaeontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University of Glasgow.
From 1903 to 1910, he ...
whose discoveries of further ''
Australopithecine
Australopithecina or Hominina is a subtribe in the tribe Hominini. The members of the subtribe are generally ''Australopithecus'' (cladistically including the genus, genera ''Homo'', ''Paranthropus'', and ''Kenyanthropus''), and it typically in ...
s'' (as well as
Wilfrid Le Gros Clark
Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark (5 June 1895 – 28 June 1971) was a British anatomist, surgeon, primatologist and palaeoanthropologist, today best remembered for his contribution to the study of human evolution. He was Dr Lee's Professor of ...
's support) eventually vindicated Dart, so much so that in 1947
Sir Arthur Keith
Sir Arthur Keith FRS FRAI (5 February 1866 – 7 January 1955) was a British anatomist and anthropologist, and a proponent of scientific racism. He was a fellow and later the Hunterian Professor and conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the ...
said "...Dart was right, and I was wrong". Keith made this statement referring to his dismissal and skepticism of Dart's analysis of the '
Taung Child
The Taung Child (or Taung Baby) is the fossilised skull of a young ''Australopithecus africanus''. It was discovered in 1924 by quarrymen working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, South Africa. Raymond Dart described it as a new species ...
' 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 popularized by playwright, screenwriter, and science writer
Robert Ardrey
Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for ''The Territorial Imperative'' (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic tr ...
, first in an article published in
''The Reporter'' and reprinted in ''
Science Digest
''Science Digest'' was a monthly American magazine published by the Hearst Corporation from 1937 through 1988.
History
''Science Digest'' was first published in January 1937 in an 8 x 5 inch digest size format of about 100 pages. ...
'', and later in Ardrey's influential four-book
Nature of Man Series,
[Webster, Bayard. "Robert Ardrey Dies; Writer on Behavior." New York: The New York Times. 16 January 1980. Print] which began in 1961 with ''
African Genesis
''African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man,'' usually referred to as ''African Genesis,'' is a 1961 nonfiction work by the American writer Robert Ardrey. It posited the hypothesis that man evolved on the A ...
''.
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 called into question. His work was clearly influenced by the mentors he worked with in his early career, in particular Grafton Elliot Smith.
Neuroscience
Dart proposed the idea of dual evolutionary origins of the neocortex. During his research in the 1930s in Africa, he studied the architecture of reptilian brains. He was able to identify a "primordial neocortex" (paraphrased), the oldest structure that can be considered as a neocortex, in a reptile. He identified a distinction between the cytoarchitecture in an area which split it into a Para-Hippocampal and a Para-Pyriform region.
Personal life
Dart married Dora Tyree, a medical student from Virginia, U.S.A., in 1921 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, U.S.A., and they divorced in 1934. He married Marjorie Frew, head librarian at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1936 and they had two children, Diana and Galen.
Legacy
The Institute for the Study of Man in Africa was established in 1956 at Witwatersrand in his honor by Phillip Tobias.In 1964 was inaugurated at the Institute the first Raymond Dart Memorial Lecture
Dart was director of the School of Anatomy at the
University of the Witwatersrand
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( o ...
,
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
until 1958. There he worked with
Phillip Tobias
Phillip Vallentine Tobias (14 October 1925 – 7 June 2012) was a South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He was best known for his work at South Africa's hominid fossil ...
(1925-2012), who continued his work in the study of the
Cradle of Humankind and other
paleoanthropological sites. In 1959, an autobiographical account of Dart's discoveries, ''
Adventures with the Missing Link,'' was published (with Dennis Craig as co-author). In the book he acknowledges the crucial role played by his first female student and Demonstrator, Josephine Salmons. She brought to his attention the existence of a fossilised baboon skull at the house of Mr
E.G. 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 Prof. Raymond Dart, she set in motion a chain of events that led to the discovery of the 'Child skull of Taung' She later became wife of Prof. Cecil Jackson, Professor of Anatomy at Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute,
University of Pretoria
The University of Pretoria ( af, Universiteit van Pretoria, nso, Yunibesithi ya Pretoria) is a multi-campus public university, public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. The university was ...
.
At the age of 73, Dart began dividing his time between South Africa and
The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential
The Institutes for The Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP), founded in 1955 by Glenn Doman and Carl Delacato, provide literature on and teaches a controversial patterning therapy (motor learning), which the Institutes promote as improving the "n ...
(IAHP), an organization founded by
Glenn Doman Glenn may refer to:
Name or surname
* Glenn (name)
* John Glenn, U.S. astronaut
Cultivars
* Glenn (mango)
* a 6-row barley variety
Places
In the United States:
* Glenn, California
* Glenn County, California
* Glenn, Georgia, a settlement ...
. Dart spent much of the next twenty years working with the IAHP, an organization that treats brain injured children.
[Review by Jean Clark of "Dart: Man of Science and Grit" by Frances Wheelhouse and Kathaleen S. Smithford. Review was published in STATNews vol. 6, issue 11, September 2003.
] His son, Galen Dart had suffered motor damage during birth in 1941. Raymond Dart died in Johannesburg in 1988, and was survived by his wife and children.
Works
* Dart R.A. (1925)
''Australopithecus africanus: The Man-Ape of South Africa'' ''Nature'', Vol.115, No.2884 (1925) 195-9 (the original paper communicating the Taung finding, in PDF format).
* Dart, R.A. (1953): "The Predatory Transition from Ape to Man." ''International Anthropological and Linguistic Review,'' 1, pp. 201–217.The publication does not exist on line, but in "http://www.users.miamioh.edu/erlichrd/vms_site/dart.html" there is a copy of the article.
* Dart, Raymond A. and Craig, Dennis (1959): ''Adventures with the Missing Link''. New York:
Harper & Brothers
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...
(
autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
).
* Fagan, Brian. ''The Passion of Raymond Dart.'' Archaeology v. 42 (May–June 1989): p. 18.
* Johanson, Donald & Maitland Edey. ''Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990
* Murray, Alexander ed. (1996): ''Skill and Poise: Articles on skill, poise and the F. M.
Alexander Technique.'' Collection of Raymond Dart's papers. Hardcover, 192+xiv pages, b/w illustrations, 234 x 156 mm, index, UK, STAT Books.
See also
*
''Dawn of Humanity'' (2015 PBS film)
*
Hominidae
The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the ea ...
*
Human evolution
Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of ''Homo sapiens'' as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of ...
*
List of fossil sites
This list of fossil sites is a worldwide list of localities known well for the presence of fossils. Some entries in this list are notable for a single, unique find, while others are notable for the large number of fossils found there. Many of t ...
''(with link directory)''
*
List of hominina fossils
The following tables give an overview of notable finds of hominin fossils and remains relating to human evolution, beginning with the formation of the tribe Hominini (the divergence of the human and chimpanzee lineages) in the late Miocene, roug ...
''(with images)''
*
Prehistoric warfare
*
W. Maxwell Cowan, his student
References
External links
Essayby
C. K. Brain
Charles Kimberlin Brain, also known as C. K. "Bob" Brain (born 7 May 1931, in Southern Rhodesia, now modern Harare, Zimbabwe), is a South African paleontologist who has studied and taught African cave taphonomy for more than fifty years.
Biogr ...
, "Raymond Dart and our African origins," accompanying the reprint of Raymond Dart's 1925 ''Nature'' article in ''A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries that Changed Science and the World'',
Laura Garwin
Laura Justine Garwin (born 1957) is an American trumpeter and former science journalist. One of the first women to become a Rhodes Scholar, she is the former physical sciences editor of ''Nature'', co-editor of the book ''A Century of Nature'', ...
and Tim Lincoln, eds.
Biography of Raymond Darton
Minnesota State University, Mankato
Minnesota State University, Mankato (MNSU, MSU, or Minnesota State) is a public university in Mankato, Minnesota, United States. It is Minnesota's second-largest university and has over 123,000 living alumni worldwide. Founded in 1868, it is ...
EMuseum website
Biography of Raymond Dartin the
TalkOrigins Archive
The TalkOrigins Archive is a website that presents mainstream science perspectives on the antievolution claims of young-earth, old-earth, and "intelligent design" creationists. With sections on evolution, creationism, geology, astronomy and homi ...
.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dart, Raymond
1893 births
1988 deaths
Australian anatomists
Australian anthropologists
South African anthropologists
Australian archaeologists
South African archaeologists
Australian expatriates in South Africa
Human evolution theorists
Paleoanthropologists
People from Brisbane
Physical anthropologists
University of Sydney alumni
Alumni of University College London
20th-century archaeologists
20th-century anthropologists
Presidents of the South African Archaeological Society
Presidents of the Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science
University of Queensland alumni
Washington University in St. Louis people
University of the Witwatersrand academics