In late November of 1924, a small fossil skull was blasted by dynamite out of a limestone Quarry near Taung, South Africa. A circuitous series of events led to that fossil being shipped by train to Professor Raymond Dart at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Dart recognized it as one of our early African ancestors, naming it Australopithecus africanus. This was the first evidence fulfilling Charles Darwin’s prediction that early human origins were from Africa. Fast-forward almost exactly 50 years, Donald Johanson of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, searching in Ethiopia, used a camel-hair brush to dust off a nearly complete skeleton, nicknamed Lucy. This was an earlier related species, Australopithecus afarensis. Celebrating the centennial of Taung and the golden anniversary of Lucy, Professor Jeffrey K McKee, an OSU anthropologist who led excavations at Taung, will reveal some secrets of both our hominin mother Lucy and the child skull from South Africa.
About our speaker:
Jeffrey K. McKee is biological anthropologist conducting research on hominin evolution and paleoecology. He has directed excavations at the early hominin sites of Taung and Makapansgat, and has published on fossils from other South African sites as well. His current research centers on contemporary species and the pressure put on them by continued human population growth. He has published over 60 scientific manuscripts and four books. McKee is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of The Ohio Academy of Science.
The OSU Science Café is co-sponsored by: University Libraries and Sigma Xi, OSU Chapter
