Happy is the scientist in whose hands a major scientific find falls. Thanks to this, one can not only make some kind of discovery, but also go down in history forever. Raymond Dart is one of those lucky ones. But the artifact he discovered turned out to be so controversial that the further fate of the find developed in the most unexpected way.
Once, a young woman from South Africa saw on the fireplace in her friend's house something that reminded her of the skull of an extinct baboon. The lady was interested in fossils and could not pass by the strange "exhibit".
She asked a friend where he got the remains of the baboon. He replied: from a quarry belonging to him, which is 10 km from Taung, which was then part of the Bechuanaland protectorate. When limestone was blown up in a quarry, fossils were sometimes exposed in the rock.
The skull was one of them. But it is unlikely, added a friend, it belongs to a great ape, because in South Africa no one has ever found their remains. The woman turned out to be especially extremely meticulous and at the first opportunity she told about what she saw to her friend, professor of anatomy, Dr. Raymond Dart. The scientist at the time was teaching at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Dart agreed with the woman's buddy about the great apes - they had never really met in South Africa. But he was ready to argue about baboons as much as he wanted: these large monkeys are well adapted to the terrestrial (non-arboreal) way of life in the arid area, which is that land. They lived in South Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago and are still found today.
Valuable parcel
Darth got excited about seeing the fossil with his own eyes. He asked the owner of the quarry to do him a favor: if new fossils come across, send them by mail.
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Time passed, and one day in 1924, Dart received a weighty package - two large boxes with fragments of limestone. In the first, Dart did not find anything interesting, but when he opened the second, his joy knew no bounds. The box contained a round piece of limestone that stood out from the jagged debris. Dart recognized him as an endocrane. So in the language of scientists is called the relief on the inner side of the cranium, reflecting the pattern of large furrows, convolutions and blood vessels of the brain.
It was obvious that this endocrane was formed naturally: once the molten rock filled the inner cavity of the skull and hardened in it, exactly reproducing the size and shape of the long-disappeared brain. According to Dart, "on the surface of the stone were clearly visible convolutions and grooves of the brain, blood vessels." Raymond Dart knew what he was talking about: the native of Australian Queensland studied anthropology at the University of Sydney and University College London. His experienced eye immediately determined: the skull broke in an explosion during limestone mining. That is, until recently he was safe and sound.
Jewelry work
To begin with, the anthropologist decided that in front of him was a baboon's endocrane. But he soon realized that he had jumped to conclusions. The brain was too large for a baboon, and it also differed in shape. Then who did he belong to? Chimpanzee or gorilla? It is not excluded. After all, these great apes have a more developed intellect and a larger brain in comparison with baboons.
And suddenly it dawned on Dart: why not assume that in the distant past, hitherto unknown, now extinct great apes lived in South Africa? He frantically rummaged through the stone box, trying to find a piece that would match the brain cast. If he succeeded, he would have had the skull itself. But then there was a loud and persistent knock on the door of his office.
This knock brought Dart back to earth. He remembered that it was for today that his best friend's wedding was scheduled, at which Dart volunteered to act as best man. With difficulty tearing himself away from his favorite fossils, Raymond was forced to hurry to the wedding ceremony. But in the evening, returning from the wedding, he rushed into the office and literally a minute later was holding in his hands a piece of rock that exactly corresponded to the endocrane.
Staring at this second fossil, the scientist realized that he was looking inside a small head. Turning the fossil upside down to see the obverse, Dart discovered that it was covered in a crust of limestone mixed with sand and gravel. This dense, cement-like material, called breccia, made it impossible to see the features of the facial skeleton. But Dart knew that the face could be seen if the hardened remains of the rock were removed from it.
Anthropology is not paleontology. Dart had only a rough idea of how to remove the breccia. But he wanted to get to the bottom of the truth by all means, and therefore armed himself with the necessary tool and set to work. As it turned out later, he was going in the right direction. Unaware of how fragile the skull would be, for fear of damaging it with the sharp blows of the chisel, Dart placed the fossil in a sandbox for stability and shock absorption. Then he took a small chisel and began, like a sculptor, carefully cutting off everything unnecessary. When Dart beat off the roughest pieces, his wife's needle was used, which he honed, making it triangular on one side. With this needle, Raymond chipped off piece by piece, and after seventy-three days the fossil was completely cleansed.
Missing link
Over the course of two months of painstaking work, Raymond Dart continually wondered whose skull would appear in front of him at the end. The result exceeded all expectations! The skull most likely belonged to a six-year-old child! His mouth was full of milk teeth. The molars, which usually appear in humans by the age of six, have just begun to erupt. That the skull belonged to a baboon was out of the question. He was too tall and round, while his face looked more like a human. And the fangs, characteristic of both baboons and gorillas with chimpanzees, were absent.
Turning the find over, Dart drew attention to an interesting feature: the large occipital foramen, which serves for the exit of the spinal cord, was located on the underside of the skull. And this clearly indicated that the child walked erect, on two legs. In baboons and chimpanzees, this hole is located closer to the back of the head - this structure of the skull is only found in animals that move on four legs. So maybe this is just a bipedal monkey? But this was contrary to all scientific ideas! The habitat of great apes was two thousand miles from Taung. Then what is it? And then it dawned on Raymond: in his hands - the missing link, the transitional step from monkey to man!
No time for jokes
What scientist doesn't dream of a great discovery? So Raymond Dart, in his early 30s, dreamed of the worldwide fame of a pioneer. And suddenly fate itself sent a grandiose find into his hands. He was simply bursting with desire to tell the whole world about his discovery.
The anthropologist sat down and wrote an article in Nature, the authoritative English journal that published the most important results of scientific research. Later, Dart admitted that in those days it was customary not to talk about such finds; they could be made public only ten years later, after a council of scientists from the British Museum or another no less respectable organization expressed their opinion about them. "However, I was convinced that my conclusions were irrefutable."
The journal accepted the article of the young scientist for publication, and soon readers learned about a new creature - "African Australopithecus." What started here! The resonance was crazy. The new creature was dubbed "baby from Taung", and Dart himself was dubbed his dad or godfather. Only the lazy didn’t talk about the “child from Taung”. But when scientists expressed their doubts about Dart's conclusions, society pounced on the young scientist like a boa constrictor on a rabbit.
"Baby" overnight became a symbol of ugliness, and reporters, until recently dreamed of interviewing its discoverer, practiced their wit at the address of the "monster from Taung." Even the respectable London weekly Spectator and the conservative newspaper Mogning Post joined the competition. The entertainers acted out scenes with each other on the stage of the British music halls: “Listen, who is this girl I saw you with last night? Is she not from Taung? " Composers wrote songs dedicated to the monkey from the Transvaal.
In parliament, which was sitting in Johannesburg, one of the deputies, inflamed by the discussion, addressed his opponent with the following words: "If this is really so, as the honorary member of Taung said …" The offended parliamentarian made a strong protest to the chairman, who members to refer to other honorary members, taking into account their appearance”.
Australopithecus gained such fame that even the Prince of Wales, who traveled to South Africa, expressed his gracious desire to examine the skull from Taung. In Johannesburg, he patronizingly declared: "In South Africa, I don't seem to hear of anything like Professor Dart's baby!"
The church also began to blaspheme Raymond Dart. He was attacked by angry priests and religious fanatics. Here is one of the samples of Darth's mail of those days: "How can you, with the gift of genius invested in you by God, and not a monkey, change the creator and become an accomplice of the devil, as well as his obedient instrument?" Finally, it came to calls to put Dart in an insane asylum …
In 1936, anthropologist Robert Broome discovered the skull of another "Australopithecus africanus" at Sterkfontein Grotto, near Johannesburg. The skull was incomplete (the lower jaw was missing), it belonged to a female aged 15-16 years, so the remains were given the name "Miss Plaz". The geological age of the find was about 2.5 million years. The Taung Kid and Miss Plaz were both sculpted from the same dough. A small head, set straight on a short, strongly protruding neck, narrow shoulders, a narrow, low forehead, a small flattened nose - everything spoke of their relationship.
From that moment on, the existence of Australopithecus was recognized by official science.
New blow
Dart's opponents finally fell silent, he could rest on his laurels. Recently, however, doubts have reappeared. Ron Clarke and Lee Berger from the same University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg all this time tried to solve the riddle of a strange creature, conducting research on its remains.
As a result, they came to the conclusion that these remains do not belong to humans. In their opinion, Dart discovered … the skull of an alien. The poor man did not die a natural death, as evidenced by the characteristic lesions on his skull. Such marks 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 that the humanoid himself made an unsuccessful first step on a planet unknown to him. It is possible that the "child from Taung" died as a result of the attack of a large bird of prey.
Other remains - the bones of monkeys, found in the same area, are pushing to this conclusion. If the theory of Ron Clarke and Lee Berger is correct, then, given the age of the find (2.5 million years), we can conclude that the "child from Taung" is the oldest alien discovered so far.
Max Maslin
Step # 25 (December) 2012