Australopithecus Africanus

1. Australopithecus Africanus By: Amanda Gross March 28,2009

2. Slide 1 • Australopithecus Africanus means Southern ape in Africa. • Australopithecus Africanus were ape like creatures who lived between 2-3 million years ago in Pliocene. • It is also said that Australopithecus Africanus are an ancestor of modern humans.

3. Slide 2 • A man named Raymound Dart is resoponisble for finding and naming Australopithecus Africanus. • Dart was in Taung, a small town in North West province of Africa. The name means “Place of the lion” It was named after a chief named Tau whose tribe spoke the language of Tswana. In Tswana Tau means lion. • Dart found a skull and it seemed like an ape, but with human traits. • Such traits as eye orbits, teeth and a hole at the base of the skull over the spianl column which indicated human like posture. Also it had a human like cranium therefore it could have had a larger brian and more facial features.

4. Slide 3 • Dart claimed that the skull he found had been an intermediate species between apes and humans, however this claim was rejected by the scientific community. • Sir Arthur Keith said that the skull belonged to a young ape maybe an infant gorilla. • The skull became to be known as The Taunga Child. • About twenty years later people began to believe Dart.

5. Slide 4 • Male Species weighed up to 100 pounds and females weighed up to 50 pounds and females height was about 3’6 • A. Africanus was often compared to A. Afarensis. • The discovery was made that A. Africanus was more evolved then A. Afarensis. • Features included a more globular cranium and a slightly higher ratio of brian size to body size. Teeth and face appeared less primitve. • Researchers considered the evolution of early humans to pass from A. Afarensis to A. Africanus and lead to early Homo. • Other researchers believed that the facial features link A. Africanus to robust early human species.

6. Slide 5 • Taung 1 Makapansgat STA 5 STS 71 Composite Skull

7. Slide 6 • In 1947 Robert Broom and John T. Robinson found a skull belonging to a middle aged female, who they named Mrs. Ples. • Raymond Dart noted the lack of facial projection when the skull was compaired to apes. • It was a trait in common with more advanced hominines. • However today the skull is now thought to belong to a man not a woman.

8. Slide 7 • Because of other primitve features on A. Africanus, reseachers believed in the hominin instead of being a direct ancestor of modern hominines. • It is said that A. Africanus is Paranthropus robustus. • Both craniums seem very alike despite the more heavily built features of P. robustus which has adaptations for heavy chewing like a gorilla. • However A. Africanus had crainums which closely resembled chimps. • Their brians measured to about 400cc to 500cc they probaly had ape like intelligene too. • A. Africanus had pelvises that were built for slightly better bipedalism than that of A. Afarensis. Austrolopithecus africanus reconstruction

9. Slide 8 • A. Africanus is still an enigma to Paleoanthropology. Researchers are still unsure about where they came from and from what species it led to. • Some species were found in Southern Africa. However they did not match the species found in Eastern Africa. • This could mean that the designation of the genus Paranthropus may be incorrect.

10. Slide 9 • The front teeth of A. Africanus stick out and the back teeth don’t, the back teeth grind togather. • They had sagital crest which ment that present is on the males for the attachment of large musles. • The skull was found beautiflly preserved and it was probaly belonged to a juvenile, maybe a three or four year old.

11. Slide 10 • Sites • WWW.Wikipedia.org • WWW.Anthropology.com • WWW.Geocities.com • WWW.Archaeologyinfo.com • WWW.Mnsu.edu