Professor Francis Thackeray is a South African who obtained his PhD in anthropology through Yale University (1984), analysing faunal remains from Late Quaternary assemblages at Wonderwerk Cave.
One hundred years ago the discovery of a skull in South Africa's North West province altered our understanding of human evolution. The juvenile skull was dubbed the Taung Child by Raymond Dart, an anatomist at the University of the Witwatersrand, who first described it. In 1924 Dart could not say exactly how old it was, but he announced that it belonged to a new species which he named Australopithecus africanus.
Much of the controversy is centred on Sterkfontein. Some researchers put the ages of fossils from a particular area at between 3.4 million and 3.7 million years old. Others estimate that those fossils are much younger, dating back to between 2 million and 2.6 million years ago. The differences arise from the dating methods used by the opposing teams. Each has published articles rejecting the other's methods.
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.One issue that hangs on the answer is the identification of the region from which our genus originated: was it in South Africa or east Africa, from an ancestral australopithecine species?Varying methodsOne reason it's been difficult to accurately date the Sterkfontein Australopithecus is that the initial discoveries were made in the course of mining for limestone, using dynamite.
Since the east African fossils can be well dated using the accurate K/Ar radiometric method, the ages of the same species in South Africa can be estimated. This approach is referred to as biochronology and is how one set of researchers in the debate reached their conclusion: that the Sterkfontein fossils from Member 4 are between 2 million and 2.6 million years old. Essentially the same ages have been obtained from uranium-lead and palaeomagnetic studies.
We examined ratios of length and breadth of the lower first molars of east African hominins. Then, using an equation that we developed, we quantified a relationship between those ratios and geological age for our sample of Tanzanian, Kenyan and Ethiopian fossils, including Australopithecus afarensis and early Homo species such as H. habilis. The dates for these have been well established.
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How old are South African fossils like the Taung Child? Study offers an answerOne hundred years ago, the discovery of a skull in South Africa's North West province altered our understanding of human evolution. The juvenile skull was dubbed the Taung Child by Raymond Dart, an anatomist at the University of the Witwatersrand, who first described it.
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