The Pleistocene Anthropoid Apes of South Africa

Abstract

DART'S discovery in 1924 of the fossil ape of Taungs, which he named Australopithecus africanus, opened a new chapter in the history of the origin of man. The type skull, which unfortunately is the only one known from that locality, is that of a five-year-old child, and though there seems little doubt that Dart was right in regarding it as an ape much nearer to man than either the chimpanzee or the gorilla, some European men of science still seem to believe that it is a variety of chimpanzee or a dwarf gorilla, in spite of the fact that the milk teeth are entirely different in structure from those of the living anthropoids, and closely similar to those of man.