The world’s oldest child
Thursday, 28 November 2024 – 5.30 p.m.
Aula Magna – Rector’s Palace
Via Università, 4 – Modena
Free access
Damiano MARCHI
University of Pisa
Iacopo MOGGI CECCHI
University of Florence
Multi-voice dialogue to talk about human evolution
In November 1924, Professor Raymond Dart, an Australian working at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, received two crates full of mammal fossil remains collected from a stone quarry near Taung, Botswana. Inside the boxes Dart found nothing particularly interesting, but then … the discovery that represented a decisive breakthrough for palaeoanthropology: an endocranial cast, followed by a face, this one partially encased in rock, and a jawbone. The sample is of exceptional value because Dart realises that this face and this cast of the brain belong to a child ‘over 2.3 million years old. His teeth are milk teeth but he is already growing permanent molars, which suggests that at the time of his death, the ‘Taung child’ was just over three years old. Other clues tell us that the child had an upright posture and bipedal locomotion very similar to ours, was about one metre tall and weighed just over 10 kg.
Exactly one hundred years after its discovery, the meeting aims to retrace the steps that led to the development of modern man in order to understand that the study of the past is the key to understanding the present.
Organisers:
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences, Museum System and Botanical Garden MUSEOMORE.