FOSSIL SKULL

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 9 July 1925, Page 5

FOSSIL SKULL

HUMAN OR APE?

SCIENTISTS AT VARIANCE.

OVER THE TAXING FIND. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT, (Received .'July 9, 10.5 a.m.) LONDON, July 8. In reference to the, controversy concerning Professor Keith’s challenge to Professor Dart’s theory on the Taung skull, Mr Elliott Smith, who arranged the exhibits at the South African pavilion, where casts of the skull as well as of the brain were displayed alongside a chimpanzee’s head, said, in an interview, that he disagreed with Professor Keith. “The exhibit impressively confirms the accuracy of Professor Dart’s general conclusion that the skull is the most wonderful fossil vet discovered. It reveals, for the first time, a form of head and brain extinct in the man-like ape, and showing more definite signs of human affinities than any previously found. Every competent scientist in Britain (except Professor Keith) who examined the evidence was convinced that Professor Dart had made good his claims. The geographical factor that Professor Dart emphasises, namelj, that Taung’s ape had wandered hundreds of miles from the forest belt, is thei surest proof of its acquired ability to live independently of trees, thereby differing profoundly from the chimpanzee and gorilla, which are entirely ■dependent on forests. Professor Keith ■completely ignores this consider ation.” —Sydney Sun Cable.