The Taung child the Australopithecenes rocky start.

in #science7 years ago

The small scull examined by Raymond Dart would eventually have huge repercussions, but for now in 1924 it would very soon just cause an uproar.

He had realized what he was shown on his first visit to Taung was not a monkey scull and consulted R.B. Young a Scottish geologist familiar with the areas geology.

Young would visit the area again in November with his Eye out for further specimens. On this visit he found two bone bearing blocks that had been carried up to the mine managers office by M. de Bruyn an alert quarryman.

Young subsequently took these to Johannesburg on the 28th of November. So intrigued was Dart with these new find that he had to be reminded by the groom that he had to leave off examining so that he could perform his duties as best man at the wedding they had been preparing for.

Dart would record of the experience:

On the very top of the rock heap was what was undoubtedly an endocranial cast or mould of the interior of the skull. Had it been only the fossilised brain cast of any species of ape it would have ranked as a great discovery, for such a thing had never before been reported. But I knew at a glance that what lay in my hands was no ordinary anthropoidal brain. Here in lime-consolidated sand was the replica of a brain three times as large as that of a baboon and considerably bigger than that of an adult chimpanzee

I stood in the shade holding the brain as greedily as any miser hugs his gold, my mind racing ahead. Here I was certain was one of the most significant finds ever made in the history of anthropology. Darwin's largely discredited theory that man's early progenitors probably lived in Africa came back to me. Was I to be the instrument by which his "missing link" was found?

The face of the scull was embedded in the rock and took weeks of painstaking and careful chipping away to reveal the face of a child.

By Didier Descouens , CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

He quickly figured out that the brain of an adult would have been much larger than any living ape and that the scull attached in such a way to the spine that the owner would have walked upright.

He named it Australopithecus meaning Southern Ape. He speculated wildly and within 40 days had dispatched a manuscript to the journal Nature as well as the local press.

Once the story broke it went wild. Dart became an overnight sensation but the scientific establishment at first spurned his discovery and later vilified him.

How dare an unknown upstart from the backwaters of the British empire dare to make such great pronouncements before consulting them and how dare he imply that man evolved in Africa when their preference at the time was Asia.

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A POST about skulls !! Interesting!!

I wonder what amazing talents , information and knowledge does steemit has in store !

Soon all the hidden talent will be onboard. Would be interesting to read such stuff.

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follow and vote back

u know about Manot Cranium
In 2008, a construction team was bulldozing an area in Manot in northern Israel when they found a cave. Inside was a unique piece of bone. It was a partial skull, but the cranium cap is priceless to archaeologists.Called Manot 1, it proves the scientific suggestion that modern humans left the African continent 60,000 to 70,000 years ago. Manot 1 is the only modern human skull found outside of Africa dating to the right time, around 60,000 to 50,000 years ago.The fragment belonged to a close cousin of the people who settled Europe and allows a rare glimpse of the first modern Europeans. Their brains were smaller. Compared to the volume of an average brain today, measuring around 1,400 milliliters, the Manot individual’s was 1,100 milliliters.[2]A bun-shaped protrusion at the back of the head is reminiscent of both ancient Europeans and more recent African fossils. However, it is unlike those who reside today in the Levant, a large area in the Mediterranean that also holds Israel. Manot 1 also places humans in a Neanderthal area during the time that previous studies predicted the beginning of interbreeding between the two species.

If my recollection is correct, there was some controversy as to how this specimen got to where it was found.

dynamite tends to cloud the picture

It really can do that.

During medieval times, doctors could only prescribe bed rest for a skull fracture. Even if the patient survived, the prognosis remained bleak. A recent study—the first to use ancient skulls to gauge death risk connected to skull fractures—found that medieval survivors of head trauma had a shortened life expectancy.Three Danish graveyards from the 12th to the 17th centuries provided the heads when the plots were moved to make space for new buildings. Only men were chosen for the study because too few women had head wounds. Males who showed no healing (which meant they succumbed to the blows soon after) were also excluded.[3]Looking only at those who got better, researchers found that the chances of these ancient victims dying prematurely was about 6.2 times higher than a man who had never sustained a skull fracture.What finally killed these unfortunates cannot be said, but a hard life probably hurt them in the first place. Fights, violence, and work accidents contributed to injuries that likely left some men with brain damage, physical disabilities, or a propensity for dying sooner.

Please help me @gavvet i am in trouble

@gavvet In Ocarina of Time, a Skull Kid can be found in the Lost Woods, in the area directly to the left of the entrance room. Whenever Link approaches, the Skull Kid will disappear from the area. To circumvent this, Link can befriend the Skull Kid by playing "Saria's Song" while standing on top of the stump across from the Skull Kid's position. He will then receive a Piece of Heart as a gift.[3] While Z Targeting, Navi mentions that the Skull Kid seems unhappy to have no face.[4] Some of the Kokiri remember hearing him complaining about his face, as well.[5] Upon first seeing Link wearing the Skull Mask, the Skull Kid comments that he would like it to make him appear a little tougher.[6] Link is then able to sell him the mask as part of the Mask Trading Sequence, but the Skull Kid pays just 10 Rupees when the wholesale price is 20, leaving Link to cover the difference.[7] Another two Skull Kids can be found in the area directly to the right of the entrance, where Link can play a Musical Session with them on his Ocarina to win another Piece of Heart.[8][9]

It is said that non-Kokiri who enter the woods become Stalfos upon getting lost.[10] However, there is speculation about whether or not Kokiri or Hylian children turn into Skull Kids. It is more plausible that the Kokiri turn into Skull Kids, due to the fact that they stay children for their whole lives, but also because Stalfos never appear within the Lost Woods, as well as that there already exist Stalchildren.

If Link encounters a Skull Kid as an adult, he will be attacked with needles shot from the Skull Kid's flute. Navi says that they are attacking because they do not like adults.[2] If Link defeats him, the Skull Kid will collapse and disappear, leaving behind an Orange Rupee.

Haha, how dare he!

I've found in reading that archaeologists need to be quite careful with new finds that disprove older work. Things like gobekli tepe are not fun for the existing thought to deal with.

Our history continually is changing with new discoveries, and it's all fascinating to me. I don't understand why people would villify new finds, that's just jealousy and fear to me. We should be looking to get the most complete picture of our history that we can!

Nice article, reminded me of my college anthropology class

STRANGE ISOLATION..
In Mexico, skulls from three areas were analyzed, dating back 500 to 800 years. The Sonora and Tlanepantla heads shared similarities but not those from Michoacan.The measurements were so different that they resembled a group that had developed in isolation for thousands of years. Yet no unbreachable landscape separated the regions. Michoacan was also just 300 kilometers (186 mi) away from Tlanepantla. For some reason, the Michoacan group did not interbreed with their neighbors and developed a distinctive skull shape.Researchers turned to human remains dating as far back as 10,000 years when Mexico received its first influx of people. These skulls came from Lagoa Santa and revealed something astonishing.[1]They, too, were so different that 10,000 years was not enough time to have evolved the skull features of South Americans today. The Lagoa Santa skulls likely shared an ancestor with modern South Americans but split 20,000 years ago outside the Americas.Conventionally, a single wave was thought to have settled the Americas. Several migrations from different areas make more sense. People isolated by tough language and cultural barriers offer some explanation for the Michoacan group. But why they remained genetically exclusive for millennia is not entirely understood.

Hi brother @gavvet
I hope you are well and you are all family
I also wish to visit you on my page and support me

In the early 20th century, the workers at limestone quarries in Southern Africa routinely uncovered fossils from the tufa formations that they mined. The tufa did not form consistently, and over time cavities were left open and they became beneficial areas for animals to take shelter in. As a result, many bones began to build up in these areas. These areas were mostly sandstone, and they stood in the way of successful mining. So, miners would use explosives to clear these areas, and discard all the debris. However, many fossils began to show up, and these were saved by many of the miners. Many were of extinct fauna, which included baboons and other primates, and the more complete or somehow more interesting fossils were kept as curiosities by the Europeans who managed operations

In 1924, workers at the Buxton Limeworks, near Taung, showed a fossilized primate skull to E. G. Izod, the visiting director of the Northern Lime Company, the managing company of the quarry. The director gave it to his son, Pat Izod, who displayed it on the mantle over the fireplace. When Josephine Salmons, a friend of the Izod family, paid a visit to Pat's home, she noticed the primate skull, identified it as from an extinct monkey and realised its possible significance to her mentor, Raymond Dart

Salmons was the first female student of Dart, an anatomist at the University of Witwatersrand. Salmons was permitted to take the fossilized skull and presented it to Dart, who also recognized it as a significant find. Dart asked the company to send any more interesting fossilized skulls that were unearthed. When a consulting geologist, Robert Young, paid a visit to the quarry office, the director, A. E. Speirs, presented him with a collection of fossilised primate skulls that had been gathered by a miner, Mr. De Bruyn. A. E. Speirs was using a particular fossil as a paperweight, and Young asked him for this as well. Young sent some of the skulls back to Dart.[4] When Dart examined the contents of the crate, he found a fossilized endocast of a skull showing the impression of a complex brain. He quickly searched through the rest of the fossils in the crates, and matched it to a fossilized skull of a juvenile primate, which had a shallow face and fairly small teeth

Only forty days after he first saw the fossil, Dart completed a paper that named the species of Australopithecus africanus, the "southern ape from Africa", and described it as "an extinct race of apes intermediate between living anthropoids and man".The paper appeared in the 7 February 1925 issue of the journal Nature The fossil was soon nicknamed the Taung Child.

However, recently doubts reappeared. Ron Clarke and Lee Berger from the same Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg have all this time been trying to solve the mystery of a strange creature by conducting research on its remains.
As a result, they came to the conclusion that these remains do not belong to man. In their opinion, Darth discovered ... the skull of an alien. The poor man did not die by his own death, as evidenced by the characteristic damage on his skull. Such traces remain after falling on sharp stones.
Ron Clarke and Lee Berger are also 100 percent convinced that the humanoid was an adult, not a child. It is likely that his interplanetary ship landed unsuccessfully, or the humanoid himself made an unsuccessful first step on an unknown planet. It is not excluded, "the child from Таунга" was lost as a result of attack of the big predatory bird.
This conclusion is pushed by other remains - the bones of monkeys found on the same site. If the theory of Ron Clark and Lee Berger is correct, then, given the age of the find (2.5 million years), it can be concluded that "a child from Taung" is the oldest of the extraterrestrials discovered at the moment.

http://paranormal-news.ru/news/zagadka_cherepa_rebenka_iz_taunga/2013-01-25-6127

Probably we still do not know who it really is.

Someone has been smoking something a little too strong and dropping well known names in with their hallucinations.

"the poor man did not die by his own death"

lol

LOL. Probably the same group that helped with the pyramids? I sense another X-Men movie soon?

great post @gavvet. thanks for sharing science subject.

you realize that I am a therapeutic understudy so science is intriguing subject for me.. I extremely awed to see your this write post... I am eager to see your next post

Australopithecus africana! I remember the name now. Memories of evolution biology coming back

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