Bare bones of a life

摘要

There have been many important milestones along the way to our ever-deepening understanding of human origins, but one was of special significance. It was Raymond Dart's interpretation, published in Nature on 7 February 1925, of the fossilized skull of a child, half-ape, half-human, that came into his hands without warning from a limestone cave at Taung in South Africa. It was the first of its kind ever to have existed. How this 32-year-old anatomist had acquired the necessary neurological expertise to draw his radical conclusions, and the confidence to challenge accepted concepts of his time, is one of the themes of this biography. It is essentially a tribute, devoid of criticism and motivated, it seems, by admiration and respect. The result could easily have proved tedious, had not Dart so richly deserved the kindly treatment given to him by these two authors; instead, it is lively and enthralling.