Osteodontokeratic tool industry

      assemblage of fossilized animal bones found at Taung by Raymond Arthur Dart (Dart, Raymond A.) about 200 miles (320 km) from Johannesburg, S.Af., 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 on. He explained his theory on the basis of the fact that certain bones turned up regularly while others were rarely found.

      Later research, however, cast doubt on the general interpretation of altered bone-remains as tools. More likely, the accumulation studied by Dart at Makapansgat resulted from the natural break-up of skeletons, the preferences of predators, and damage to the bones by stones falling from the cave roof.

* * *