Dart, Raymond (1893-1988), was an Australian-born South African anthropologist (person who studies human beings scientifically). He was among the first scientists to suggest that the earliest ancestors of human beings lived in Africa. In 1925, Dart announced that a fossil skull of an apelike creature found in Taung, near Vryburg in what is now South Africa, was a human ancestor, today called a hominin. Hominins make up the scientific group that consists of human beings and early humanlike ancestors. He named the creature Australopithecus africanus, meaning southern ape of Africa. The skull was that of a child, perhaps 3 years old, and most scientists thought it was an extinct ape. Additional fossils found in southern and eastern Africa during the next 35 years convinced scientists that Australopithecus was a hominin.
Raymond Arthur Dart was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, on Feb. 4, 1893. From 1922 through 1958, he was professor of anatomy at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, where, from 1925 to 1943, he was also dean of the medical school. He died on Nov. 22, 1988.
See also Australopithecus; Prehistoric people (The australopithecines).
