Most people today would be familiar with the fact that the earliest stages of human evolution took place in Africa. But very few would realise that it was a Toowong-born UQ alum who provided the first fossil evidence.

2025 marks the centenary of the remarkable – and controversial – discovery of Australopithecus africanus by Australian anatomist and anthropologist Professor Raymond Dart (BSc 1914, MSc 1916).

Who was Ramond Dart?

Raymond Dart was born on Sylvan Road, Toowong, in the midst of a catastrophe. One of 7 children, he was rescued from the 1893 Brisbane flood just after his birth, along with his mother Eliza and the midwife, from the second floor of the family fruit shop.

Of all his siblings, he showed the greatest interest in academia. His mother Eliza played an important role in supporting his curiosity – she even sent off interesting rocks he found for scientific identification.

Dart secured a scholarship to Ipswich Grammar and, after completing his schooling, enrolled in a Bachelor of Science in 1910 at The University of Queensland, then newly opened. Dart excelled at UQ and his education here played an important role in his approach to understanding evolutionary biology.

Following his UQ education, Dart was trained by some of the world’s leading anatomists. He then took up posts at University College, London, and Washington University, St Louis, before settling as a Professor in the newly established Department of Anatomy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1922.

The Taung Child: a bone of contention

In February 1925, after careful preparation of a specimen encased in a limestone block using his wife’s knitting needles, Professor Dart revealed the face of a fossilised child to the world. The specimen had been found in a quarry in Taung, South Africa. Professor Dart's findings regarding the fossil, published in the prestigious journal Nature, represented an account of human origins that was, at the time, both an inconvenience and annoyance to the prevailing scientific view.

Many scientists of the era argued that the first fossils of humankind probably came from Europe or Asia. Dart’s mentors argued that a fossil known as Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsonii), found in Sussex, represented the so-called ‘missing link’ between humans and primates.

The fossil Professor Dart discovered in South Africa – known as the Taung Child – was a major bone of contention. It was rejected by the leading anatomists of the day as it not only contravened existing views on our biogeographical origins, but also challenged a dominant theory of human development: that the evolution of a large brain in a largely arboreal ancestor came before the ability to walk on two legs. This theory was supported by the Piltdown Man fossil.

The Taung Child supported a competing theory that claimed the most significant step towards humanity was the adoption of bipedalism (two-legged locomotion), and that this predated the development of a larger human brain. Unlike the Piltdown fossil, the Taung Child had a very small brain, around the size of a chimpanzee of the same age (3-4 years old), but the placement of its foreman magnum (the point where the spinal column connects with the base of the skull) indicated that it had walked on two legs.

But Professor Dart's findings were dismissed. The large-brained Piltdown fossil had already received the stamp of approval from Sir Arthur Keith and Grafton Elliot Smith, to name but a few of the people that Professor Dart had revered as his mentors, and they refused to accept this new African specimen – it would certainly have been a crushing blow for the Australian.

It is also important to note that, in the early 1900s, the dominant approach to understanding human origins was by dividing humanity into different ‘types’, and European exceptionalism dominated evolutionary hierarchies. The concept of different ‘races’ of humankind was very much alive. Professor Dart’s African discovery threatened this prevailing mindset.

A scandalous forgery uncovered

But Professor Dart had the truth on his side. Subsequent research was able to find and confirm adult fossils of Australopithcus africanus, supporting his claims beyond doubt. The Piltdown fossil increasingly became side-lined and, indeed, viewed with suspicion.

In the the 1950s, decades after Professor Dart's initial findings on the Taung fossil, the Piltdown Man was ultimately confirmed to be a deliberate forgery: a human skull cap and an orangutan jaw with its canines filed down and stained to match the skull. This shocking fake had managed to deceive a generation of the world's leading evolutionary anatomists.

Professor Dart was vindicated, and Sir Arthur Keith published a note declaring that he had been wrong and that Professor Dart (and Charles Darwin himself) had been correct all along: human origins were African. This must have brought an immense sense of relief to Professor Dart, who had never given up on his original belief in his assignment of the young juvenile fossil as an important link in understanding the story of human evolution.

A unique scientific mind

Professor Dart was uniquely placed to investigate the Taung fossil. He held a range of diverse analytical skills that were employed with laser focus on understanding the unique anatomical landmarks he observed in the specimen, but also in considering the ecological context that may have driven the evolutionary change in the Australopithecine.

According to palaeoanthropologist Ian Tattersal, Dart approached the fossil like no other scholar before him. This very approach was criticised following his initial 1925 publication on the Taung Child; in particular the colourful prose he employed when describing the evolutionary context likely responsible for the emergence of Australopithecus africanus:

Ian Tattersal noted that Professor Dart seems to have been the first in his field have felt viscerally the drama of the biological history of mankind. He considered the fossil within its evolutionary context, attempting to understand the ecological niche providing the evolutionary change that ultimately saw the emergence of the Australopithecines.

The leading experts on human evolution at the time were traditionally anatomists, not evolutionary biologists. At this early stage of palaeoanthropology’s development as a discipline, Professor Dart appears to be amongst the first to colourfully bring palaeoecological context into consideration. 

Celebrating the centenary of Professor Dart’s discovery

Nature has celebrated the 2025 centenary of the Taung fossil publication by producing a compendium of the 100 most significant papers published in the journal on human evolution in Africa. Numerous other commemorations have occurred in South Africa exploring the nature of past palaeoanthropological practice and how it is today being decolonised.

At UQ, we have recently held a colloquium celebrating the centenary and exploring different aspects of both the discovery and Dart’s character at UQ Brisbane City. A keynote was also delivered for the annual Jay Hall Lecture by Associate Professor Jackson Njau, a Tanzanian archaeologist and the President of the East African Association for Palaeoanthropology and Palaeontology.

But perhaps the most important aspect of the UQ commemorations of the Taung discovery is the development of a program with the Queensland African Community Council and Redbank High School, introducing students to the University.

This program will provide Queensland secondary students an excellent chance to learn about research in labs in archaeology, palaeontology and anatomy.

Hopefully the discovery, one hundred years later, can continue to inspire.