{"id":4695,"date":"2019-10-31T11:54:29","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T02:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/163.180.4.222\/lab\/?p=4695"},"modified":"2019-10-31T11:54:29","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T02:54:29","slug":"how-australopithecus-provided-insight-into-human-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=4695","title":{"rendered":"How Australopithecus provided insight into human evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 1925, a\u00a0Nature<\/i>\u00a0paper reported an African fossil of a previously unknown genus called\u00a0Australopithecus<\/i>. This finding revolutionized ideas about early human evolution after human ancestors and apes split on the evolutionary tree.<\/h5>\n

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Figure 1 | Raymond Dart in 1925 holding the<\/b>\u00a0Australopithecus africanus<\/i><\/b>\u00a0fossil called the Taung Child.<\/b><\/span>Credit: School of Anatomical Sciences\/WITS<\/p>\n

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Australian-born Raymond Dart had barely started his job as chair of the anatomy department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, when he made a momentous discovery. Using his wife\u2019s knitting needles, he painstakingly extracted a fossil (Fig. 1) from a chunk of rock found in Taungs (now known as Taung), South Africa. As he recalled1<\/a><\/sup>, \u201cthe rock parted \u2026 What emerged was a baby\u2019s face, an infant with a full set of milk teeth \u2026 I doubt if there was any parent prouder of his offspring than I was of my \u2018Taungs baby\u2019 on that Christmas of 1924.\u201d Better yet, the fossil fitted neatly with another type of fossil, called an endocast, formed from sediments accumulated inside the skull. The endocast reflects brain-surface details stamped on the braincase\u2019s inner walls. These fossils revealed a combination of ape-like and human-like features never previously reported together.<\/p>\n

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