Australopithecus africanus

…where the first specimen of Australopithecus africanus was found, and at Makapansgat, where other specimens of A. africanus were found. Dart proposed that these fossils were tools used by A.africanus, an early hominid species. He postulated that teeth were used as saws and scrapers, long bones as clubs, and so…

…important contrast to the so-called gracile australopiths, in which the cranial base is relatively narrow and elongated.

Australopithecus africanus, which lived approximately two to three million years ago, had a fully modern foot and probably strode.

… of later hominins such as A. africanus (3.3–2.4 mya) and Paranthropus robustus (1.8–1.5 mya) of South Africa do not differ markedly from those of A. afarensis. The locomotor skeleton of eastern African P. boisei (2.2–1.3 mya) is poorly known, but there is no reason to assume that it was different…

Models of the habitat of Au. africanus, based on fauna from the two major South African cave sites—Sterkfontein and Makapansgat—stress closed-canopy wooded conditions: either dry woodland with grasslands nearby or subtropical forest. During the tenures of H. habilis and

sediba and A. africanus, remains of which found in southern Africa show that it lived there between about 3.3 million and 2.0 million years ago. This evidence suggested that A. sediba could be a direct descendant of A. africanus.

In 1925 South African anthropologist Raymond Dart coined the genus name Australopithecus to identify a child’s skull recovered from mining operations at Taung in South Africa. He called it Australopithecus africanus, meaning “southern ape of Africa.” From then until 1960 almost all